He imagines blossom as fancy dress, as an artist or a magician lighting up countryside, town and city. Yes, it is a thing of beauty and joy but also, sometimes, a pertinent reminder of changing climate patterns.
On World Poetry Day and to celebrate spring, the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has launched a collection celebrating the bright blossom that sweeps through the UK at this time of year.
Working with the National Trust, Armitage has spent a year travelling the country visiting blossom sites: lovely gardens and remote rural locations, but also parks, shopping precincts and city centres.
The result is a volume of poetry and the release of an EP by his band, LYR, both called Blossomise, that he hopes will inspire the people of the UK to immerse themselves in this year’s spring spectacle. The collection is illustrated by the printmaker Angela Harding.
Armitage said: “Nature writing goes right back to the very origins of poetry. I wanted the poems to key in to that tradition. At the same time, I wanted them to exist in the here and now, using everyday language and dealing with contemporary issues, not least climate change. Blossom is such a strong emblem of spring, but also a very delicate indicator of unstable climate conditions. I’ve tried to find that balance both within and across the poems.”
The poet had intended to write 10 poems, but said his imagination “overshot the finishing line” and 11 haiku followed. Given the significance of blossom in Japanese culture and poetry, it felt like a “happy extension” of the task.
Five of the pieces have been adapted into the songs for the Blossomise EP, which LYR worked on with community choirs and student film-makers. The poems and songs are to be performed at blossom sites from Plymouth to Newcastle upon Tyne, notionally following the advance of spring from south to north.
Armitage said: “This feels like the right project at the right time, designed to amplify the joy of blossom, encourage people all over the country to feel inspired by nature’s resilience, and to welcome the coming of spring.”
In his poem The Spectators, Armitage likens blossom to trees in fancy dress: candelabras, chandeliers, fright wigs, “manic pierrots throwing sugared almonds and cherry lips into the streets”.
A piece called Blossom: a CV has blossom as a pavement artist, a magician, a sculptor, a ballet dancer. But the climate emergency makes an appearance: “When the weather turned / And the seasons unravelled / Blossom was a weathervane.”
This is the fifth iteration of the National Trust’s blossom campaign, which came to prominence during the first Covid lockdown. The charity said earlier this month that this year’s blossom season had come early, but cold snaps since then caused it to fall back into a familiar rhythm.
Annie Reilly, the head of the blossom programme, said she hoped the Armitage project would inspire people to dive into the annual feelgood spectacle, “whether that is by reading poetry under the falling petals of a cherry tree, listening to the music in the middle of an orchard, smelling spring’s perfume in the gardens, attending a live performance, or simply taking in the sea of pink and white petals, wherever they are”.
Details of the tour and the National Trust campaign are available here
Profusion
We plucked a poem
out of a book,
scissored it off
while the words and letters
still popped,
while the lines and stanzas
curtsied and blushed.
We dried and pressed it
between the years,
between cherry leaves.
That makes no sense.
Then folded and folded it,
posted it into a hole
in a stone-fruit tree.
It was an old-style,
home-style poem.
Meaning what?
Meaning blossom as light,
blossom as hope
after winter’s tunnel,
after the narrow dark.
The plan was to reignite
the living flame
if the flame went out.
Hey presto, in April
the poem budded and bloomed
and we read it, chanted it,
knew it by heart.
But it blossomed again
in July, then again
in December, drunk
on meltwater, drugged
with the tepid milk
of the winter sun.
What had we done?
Excerpted from
Blossomise by Simon Armitage (Faber & Faber, £10). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
