Simon Armitage: Dwell
(Faber & Faber, 2025)
Jetzt wär es Zeit, die tiere träten / aus bewohnten Dingen ...
I.
As a Heideggerian, I was obviously going to be intrigued by a book with the title Dwell.
For dwelling [wohnen] is one of the key ideas in Heidegger's later work and refers to the fundamental way human beings exist in the world; not simply occupying space like bumps on a log, but caring for, preserving, and finding meaning as earth-dwelling mortals beneath the sky and before the gods [b].
It's the antithesis of the homelessness that for Heidegger characterises modernity. But so too is it distinct from the Nazi idea of a life rooted in Blut und Boden (even if it has a Völkisch feel to it) and is tied to the Heideggerian ethic of letting be [Gelassenheit].
When we dwell, we allow other beings to be what they are in all their complexity and do not seek to dominate, manipulate, or exploit them as a resource.
Poetically speaking - and Heidegger links dwelling explicitly to poetry - man learns how to inhabit the earth by acknowledging the sacred mystery of otherness (be that in the form of birds, beasts, flowers, or demons) and finding a new revealing other than the revealing of technology, which he terms enframing [Ge-stell].
He names this new revealing poiesis - a term that refers to the act of creation as a bringing-forth (or unfolding) into being.
II.
So, then, to the collection of sixteen poems by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage (illustrated by Beth Munro); a work which attempts to illuminate and reimagine the dwelling places of animals native to the UK and particularly those that inhabit the Lost Gardens of Heligan [c].
Interestingly, and in a way in which I approve, distinctions between human and animal are curdled without ever denying their otherness. Similarly, Armitage blurs the distinction between natural and cultivated when it comes to dwelling places inhabited by creatures, such as the twig-and-leaf construction of a bird's nest. But he also "warns of the fragility of these spaces and their dwellers, exposed to relentless and sadly familiar environmental threats" [d].
Just as even a small back-garden can provide refuge for whatever wildlife remains in this, one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, so too, hopes Armitage, can his poems "offer lasting homes to those who dwell within their lines" [e].
However, Armitage also notes that, as a bare minimum, actual flesh-and-blood creatures
also need to eat and breed in the extra-textual world; "and to achieve those things they need the
shelter of somewhere to live" as the "consequence of homelessness for most living things is extinction" (x).
Unfortunately, "human dominance on Planet Earth has proved disastrous for the habitation needs of most non-human populations" (x). As a species, we are, at the very least - and it's a word I'm borrowing from Armitage - inhospitable.
Because, ultimately, he's a humanist, Armitage soon says things such as this: animals should be valued because they "encourage the expansion of the human mind" (x) and "enhance what it is to be human" (xi). That's not my position: I try to think animality (and, indeed, vegetal life) outside of their value to us; to think of them as beings in their own right - but not beings that should be accorded rights by Man.
As beings with irreplaceable singularity they exist independently of human evaluation or legal frameworks and should not be driven into extinction nor subjected to industrial scale slaughter. Armitage seems slightly uncomfortable at the use of the word genocide with reference to this, although he admits it has a "certain amount of justification" (x).
Finally, before we take a look at the verses themselves, let me quote what Armitage says re the topic of dwelling. Obviously, he's not Heidegger, but it still has some interest:
"If Dwell is about 'the garden' as a sanctuary or refuge, about the locations we must provide and safeguard if we are serious about co-existing with lives other than our own, its simultaneous meaning is an encouragement to slow down and spend time with ideas. [...] And the poems themselves are dwellings, too - constructions built from language and contemplation, places to enter." (xii-xiii)
III.
The short collection opens with a poem titled 'Pond'.
That's a good place to start, as the word pond derives from an old English term for a confined space - particularly an enclosed body of water - which, of course implies a dwelling place, and Armitage mentions the newts that live there.
However, rather strangely, he seems more concerned with the surface of the pond; "the glassy water's / two-way mirror" (3), which merely reflects life - and that's a little concerning; as is the cinematic metaphor that follows, suggesting animals are but projections upon a screen.
On a less troubling note, the verse is primarily about the fragile (but resilient) stillness of life, which Armitage (rightly) finds magical. Violent disruptions are inevitable, but the world eternally returns.
IV.
'Pond' is followed by 'Drey' which opens with the lovely description of a squirrel's dwelling place:
It's a twig-and-leaf crow's-nest squat
wombed with feather and moss
wedged in the fork of an oak. (6)
If it had been me, I'd've finished there; for it's kind of perfect as is and whilst the 26 lines that follow tell us what the poet thinks of the squirrel, they don't reveal anything of what the squirrel thinks of the poet.
I suppose, as a long-time reader of Lawrence, I was expecting a rather more ontologically insightful verse; to hear something of the vital, non-human otherness of the squirrel and not simply be told that squirrels have beady black eyes and are jumpy creatures which like to steal nuts from bird-feeders.
Also, I don't mind a degree of anthropomorphism, but it has to remain critical in nature and not merely be a projection of human traits on to animals in an attempt to be humorous. And so, for the record; squirrels do not wear "soft work-gloves" (6) in order to tackle daily jobs and beavers - the subject of the following verse, 'Lodge' - do not watch cable TV, read House and Garden, or sip Earl Grey tea (8) [f].
If - as I've seen it said - Armitage wishes to satirise the Disneyfied manner we often think of animals by incoporating twee and sentimental images into his own poetry, then, unfortunately, I think he fails on this occasion. In other words, it's a self-defeating move that obscures the actual creature, creates a collision of tones, and takes away from the poem's ecological seriousness.
V.
'Den' is a much harder and superior poem to 'Lodge' and 'Drey' - and I like it! One wonders: does Armitage prefer foxes to squirrels and beavers; do they more readily set his mind on fire?
He certainly seems to have a greater degree of imaginative understanding and I was excited to encounter the Armitage fox emerging "out of ash and filth" into "a wet morning" and "dripping with flames" (13).
VI.
'Hive' is one of my favourite poem in the collection - and not just because I love honey or "jars of sunlight / in edible form" (17), as Armitage writes.
Of course, it's not just sunlight that can be devoured; the darkness too can provide vital nourishment - if you're a bat! And in 'Roost', Armitage speaks of that twilight hour when the sun "fizzles out" and bats "unhug themselves and fly" from their dwelling places ready to "eat the night" (19).
VII.
If I liked 'Hive' and 'Roost' on the one hand, I hated 'Insect Hotel' on the other: a series of imaginary online reviews posted by six-legged guests on a site such as TripAdvisor. Obviously, it's intended to be comic, but, unfortunately, it isn't funny at all - indeed, it just may be, to paraphrase Comic Book Guy, the Worst. Poem. Ever.
And considering that it's written by a Professor of Poetry whose work has received numerous prizes and awards - in 2018, for example, Armitage was even given the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry) - it's a poem that, if I were him, I'd seriously consider removing from the collection.
It may have a place in a children's poetry anthology, but it does not belong in a book which is intended to address a painfully tragic situation: "Tragic for the plight of animals, of course, but also a pitiful reflection on our own attitudes and activities." (x)
Armitage seems to think he can have it both ways: offering a profound poetic meditation on dwelling and animality on the one hand, whilst giving us anthropomorphic dad humour on the other; but he can't. There's nothing fun or wacky about ecocide and the extermination of wildlife (including insects) and not even Beth Munro's illustrations [h] can save you this time, Simon.
VIII.
It's an interesting philosophical idea to conceive of rabbits as the intelligence of the hillside: 'Warren' (31); i.e., to suggest that consciousness is just an epiphenomenal effect of non-sentient matter.
I also liked the first six days of 'Deer Diary' (32-33), in which the distinction between animals and their environment was shown to be anything but clear cut; the narrator mistakes wood smoke, a heap of leaves, shadows, patches of snow, and heat haze for various deer.
I could do without Sunday's unicorn (33), however; just as I could do without the young girl's angel in 'Nest Box' (36).
Again, actual biological entities such as deer and barn owls, are magical and awe-inspiring in themselves - we don't need legendary creatures and supernatural spirits, ta very much.
(At a push, if feeling generous, I'd concede that all objects are equally real objects and exist on the same flat ontology, but can't help feeling that here unicorns and angels add nothing and detract from the poetic realism of the work.)
IX.
Compared with 'Insect Hotel', 'Cote' is a masterful work: and at least it rhymes.
But, again, for all its attempted witty word play, it's got that depressingly unfunny comic tone and so fails to do what it wishes to do; namely, challenge the idea that the value of birds is their symbolic significance for man.
We may like to believe that a dove, for example, is a symbol of the holy spirit, or divine love, or peace, hope and purity, but such idealism degrades the actual being of the bird in all its avian alterity and complex biological nature.
And it also fails to offer them any protection, which is why, for example, many populations of dove are in severe decline and/or critically endangered [h].
X.
I began this post by discussing Heidegger's notion of dwelling and I'd like to close with one of Heidegger's thought-poems [Gedachtes], which affords an interesting contrast in style and tone with Armitage's verses:
Forests spread
Brooks plunge
Rocks persist
Mist diffuses
Meadows wait
Springs well
Winds dwell
Blessing muses [i]
Notes
[a] I'm reworking the famous opening lines of an untitled poem written by Rilke about a year before his death in 1926 (see Insel ed., II. 185), replacing daß Götter with die tiere, so that it reads in English: 'Now it is time that the animals emerge / from things by which they dwell'.
[b] Heidegger refers to these elements - earth, sky, mortals, divinities - as the fourfold [das Geviert] and argues that dwelling is a harmonisation of these things (it's not just about constructing a shelter - even if that shelter happens to be a Black Forest hut).
The important essay 'Building Dwelling Thinking' (1951) can be found in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Routledge, 1993), pp. 343-363. Or in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (Harper Perennial, 1975), pp. 143-161.
[c] Armitage was invited (i.e., commissioned) to write a series of poems for the Lost Gardens of Heligan; a large garden restoration project and major tourist attraction, in Cornwall: "Protected and carefully managed, the Gardens also provide a haven - both intentionally and inadvertently - for wildlife."
See the 'Welcome Note' to Dwell supplied by Armitage, p. xii. All future page references to this book will be given directly in the text.
[d] Quoted from the publishers blurb found on their website and on the inside of the book's front cover.
[e] Ibid.
[f] I did like the description of beavers as teeth "that have grown bodies and tails" (9) and, again, there is little wrong with Armitage's description of a beaver's lodge, as "a kindling hut" held together "with sludge and stones" (8); a description which made me think of Heidegger's little three-roomed cabin in the Black Forest and known as die Hütte.
Readers who are interested in the latter might like to see Adam Sharr, Heidegger's Hut (MIT Press, 2006), a work which explores the intense relationship between a man and his environment and how thinking is related to dwelling.
[g] Beth Munro is a hybrid printmaker and illustrator: click here to visit her website. It might be argued that Munro's complex and clever illustrations add a necessary extra layer of philosophical seriousness to Dwell - the images are certainly not just decorative.
[h] The European turtle dove, for example, is on the brink of extinction in the UK, its numbers having fallen by 99% since the 1960s, due to intensive agricultural practices, habitat loss, shortage of food, and shooting for sport by the French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
[i] See Martin Heidegger, 'The Thinker as Poet', in Poetry, Language, Thought ... p. 14.
Readers who wish to read more should also get hold of Martin Heidegger, Thought Poems, trans. Eoghan Walls (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2021).
