Telegraph e-paper

POEM OF THE WEEK

Alex Bell

Trivia isn’t always trivial.

When someone we love dies, unexpected, seemingly unimportant things – odd facts, lists, tunes – can become weighted down with their memory. “There are songs that have you in them like a pit,” as the poet and editor Alex Bell puts it, in this remarkable – and very unusual – elegy.

“The poem is a tribute to the late Roddy Lumsden, so is very special to me,” says Bell. Lumsden, a prolific and influential poet’s poet, died in 2020. He was “a friend who was a pub quizmaster and incredible source of trivia. Most of the poem is constructed from answers to quiz questions from the (many) virtual quizzes I took part in over lockdown. Did you know the seven Crufts categories of dog? You do now.”

Here a disordered pile-up of trivia (eg how many medals did “flying housewife” Fanny Blankers-Koen win?) becomes a kind of monument to the absent friend. One tidbit is placed on the next, like pebbles in a cairn, to create a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts.

These are the sort of “discoveries” that the trivialoving Lumsden would have enjoyed; as they can no longer be shared with him, they find a place in this poem instead.

The title, “Arkteia”, is the name of the Ancient Greek bear-imitating rite described in the closing lines. “Arkteia” first appeared in Perverse (perverse. substack.com), an excellent poetry newsletter edited by another bear-loving writer, Chrissy Williams.

Tristram Fane Saunders

History

en-gb

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/281732683367648

Daily Telegraph