When Huddersfield council proposed turning some local grazing land into a cemetery during the Covid lockdown, some nearby residents were unhappy. Not poet laureate Simon Armitage, who also lived close to the site. In the introductory essay to his poetry collection, New Cemetery, he notes how the dead would be ideal neighbours for a writer who enjoys quiet. He also “figured that once the departed had taken up residence in the soil, they were unlikely to be evicted to make way for some other form of public amenity or private eyesore”.
From his home, Armitage watched as the cemetery took shape, the pastures giving way to walkways, parking bays and neatly arranged burial plots. The verse is rooted in his ruminations around the cemetery’s creation, which coincided with the death of his father who had taught him how to win a fight and the best way to hold an axe (“You’re holding it all wrong / It’s not a pen”). Each poem is named after a species of moth, among them Common Quaker, Dark Brocade, Pine Beauty and May Highflyer, and written in three-line stanzas.
