Simon Armitage :
Simon Armitage Born in 1963 From Huddersfield Used to be a probation officer Northern Accent Poetry ‘where one type of person stands eyeball to eyeball with another type, and something passes between them.’
Collapsed Poem :
Exercise
Look at the list of words on the screen.
What type of words are they?
What do they make you think of?
What type of character do you think they would apply to? Collapsed Poem Wordle - Untitled
The Clown Punk :
Driving home through the shonky side of town,
three times out of ten you’ll see the town clown,
like a basket of washing that got up
and walked, towing a dog on a rope. But
don’t laugh: every pixel of that man’s skin
is shot through with indelible ink;
as he steps out at the traffic lights,
think what he’ll look like in thirty years’ time –
the deflated face and shrunken scalp
still daubed with the sad tattoos of high punk.
You kids in the back seat who wince and scream
when he slathers his daft mush on the windscreen,
remember the clown punk with his dyed brain,
then picture windscreen wipers, and let it rain. The Clown Punk
Slide 5:
Threatening Tattoos Spiky Freaks Not Normal
Slide 6:
Scary Sad Painted Smile Laughed At
Close Reading :
Exercise
In your groups, look at your stanza and use your Poetry Sheet to pick out the listed features.
What voice does the poet use?
How does the poet give us a sense of the Clown Punk’s character? Close Reading
Annotations :
Annotations Driving home through the shonky side of town,
three times out of ten you’ll see the town clown,
like a basket of washing that got up
and walked, towing a dog on a rope. But
don’t laugh: every pixel of that man’s skin
is shot through with indelible ink;
as he steps out at the traffic lights,
think what he’ll look like in thirty years’ time –
the deflated face and shrunken scalp
still daubed with the sad tattoos of high punk.
You kids in the back seat who wince and scream
when he slathers his daft mush on the windscreen,
remember the clown punk with his dyed brain,
then picture windscreen wipers, and let it rain.
What type of character is he? :
Character What type of character is he? How do we know?