''Book of Matches'' is a poetry book written by Simon Armitage, first published in 1993 by

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

. It was admired by critics and has been used in English literature examinations.

Author

Simon Armitage is an English poet, playwright and novelist. He was appointed as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds and became Oxford Professor of Poetry when he was elected to the four-year part-time appointment from 2015 to 2019. He was born and raised in Marsden, West Yorkshire. At the start of his career, and at the time ''Book of Matches'' was published, he was working as a

probation officer A probation and parole officer is an official appointed or sworn to investigate, report on, and supervise the conduct of convicted offenders on probation or those released from incarceration to community supervision such as parole. Most probati ...

Book

Publication history

''Book of Matches'' was published in paperback by

in 1993. They reprinted it in 2001.

The book is written in three sections, the first (''Book of Matches'') containing 30 fourteen-line poems or sonnets. Each is meant to be read within the time it would take for a match to be lit and burn out, as Armitage states in the first poem, "My party piece:" The second, ''Becoming of Age'', contains 14 titled poems, including "Penelope", alluding to the wife who waits for the return of

Odysseus Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...

to Ithaca, and "The Lost Letter of the Late Jud Fry", alluding to the dirty-fingernailed farmhand character in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical '' Oklahoma!''. The third, ''Reading the Banns'', contains 12 untitled poems based on a wedding theme, titled for the

banns of marriage The banns of marriage, commonly known simply as the "banns" or "bans" (from a Middle English word meaning "proclamation", rooted in Frankish and thence in Old French), are the public announcement in a Christian parish church, or in the town cou ...

; critics have detected echoes of W. H. Auden in its lines.

Reception

The London Magazine ''The London Magazine'' is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732. All six have focused on the arts, literature and miscellaneous topics. 1732–1785 ''The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly I ...

'' welcomed ''Book of Matches'' as powerfully written with a distinctive approach. It cited the fifth poem in the initial "Book of Matches" section as characterising Armitage's approach: describing the act of skimming stones on a lake, it admires his use of metaphor in Elspeth Barker in '' The Independent'', admired the book, writing that "His virtuosity with form and metre has always been remarkable; here it is breakthtaking." She noted that Armitage's persona had changed from his earlier collections, "quit inghis Northern Ladding and grown up." His style had changed, too: "a morning suit is a big improvement on an anorak". In Barker's view, "the finest and angriest poem in the book" is ''To Poverty'', subtitled "After Laycock", the 19th century poet

Samuel Laycock Samuel Laycock (1826–1893) was a dialect poet who recorded in verse the vernacular of the Lancashire cotton workers. He was known as the Marsden poet. He was born on 17 January 1826 at Intake Head, Pule Hill, Marsden, West Yorkshire, the son of ...

who was, like Armitage, born in Marsden. She describes it as "a raging indictment with a grim conclusion". Ronald Carter, writing in 2001 in ''The Routledge History of Literature in English'', called the book Armitage's "most distinctive volume". Daniel McGuiness, in '' The Antioch Review'', thought Armitage the best of a new generation of young British poets, writing that "somehow this book has been written by the love child of Philip Larkin and

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...

." The ''

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

'' printed three of poems, ''Penelope'', ''On the Trail of the Old Ways'', and ''The Lost Letter of the Late Jud Fry'', on 22 July 1993, before the collection appeared in print. Several poems from the book have been studied as part of the

GCSE The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private sc ...

English Literature examination in the UK. The poet and novelist Ruth Padel described ''Book of Matches'' as a punning title, meaning both the means to light fires and "matters matrimonial", with an "anoraky obsession with series". She found the series of wedding poems banal, commenting that praise for the book had come mainly from non-poets.

References

Bibliography