Daylight is inspiring. Fresh air, from a light summer's breeze to a strong gust of wind, is inspiring. So, it stands to reason that Velux skylights, which bring you both abundant light and fresh air, can be pretty inspiring too. At least, that's how the United Kingdom's Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, felt when he sat beneath his Velux skylights and penned two verses for the UK news site, NewStatesman.
In the online publication's culture series "How we live now" about life during the pandemic, Armitage says that as "a kind of writer-in-residence" in his own house, he's scrutinized his creative process. He says this scrutiny is especially evident "when sitting under the Velux window over my desk. The confrontation between thought and blank page has escalated dramatically for me during lockdown, and the two poems here are negotiated settlements of a kind, attempts at resolving the daily stand-off."
Velux 1
Velux window,
headspace
over a slanted booth,
hatch in the mind,
the hours refracting
on blank paper
or printed page,
the pane
hinged at the hip
for more tilt
should tilt
be required.
Pitch and yaw.
Pull down
on the top bar
to unseal the sky,
for a hit of air.
Glazed hob or halo
on hot days,
and some nights
the silversmith moon
delivers
an empty tray
to the narrow desk.
Glider cockpit,
chancel-for-one,
oblique alcove
for piloting
angled thought
through diagonal light.
Velux 2
Dear reader,
this morning the poet
is under the Velux,
fontanel
in the pitched roof,
camera lucida
throwing
barbed-wire longhand
at hotchpotch skies,
glass planchette
elbowing
cloud-edge and cloudbase
onto a scrawled page,
dog-legged
illumination
proofing
and proving,
the kinked light
a merciless critic
of passable words
and 'finished' works.
He'll dither a while,
poem-less under
trepanned tiles, stalled
in the anglepoise
of heaven
and desk,
damned if he'll rhyme
miracle
with spiracle
These poems feature in "How We Live Now", from the NewStatesman's Summer 2020 issue.
How does your Velux skylight inspire you? Tell us in the comments!
