Clown Punk
A man driving home through the rundown (shonky) side of town with his children in the backseat sees a heavily tattooed homeless man. The children wince at the sight of the vagrant when he tries to wash the windscreen of the car in the hope of making a few pence.
The father tells the children to remember the 'clown punk' although his reason is unclear.
The philosophical tone of the poem would suggest that the speaker wants his children to look past the decay of the clown punk and see his inner tragedy and humanity.
The image of the windscreen wipers and rain in the final rhyming couplet suggests a washing away of the past, or a sense of renewal or cleansing.
The ambiguous ending of the poem is typical of an autobiographical poem where the poet is writing from memory.
In an interview with BBC Bradford and Yorkshire Armitage explained that the clown punk in the poem is based on a man Armitage saw around town:
I used to see around town quite a lot, who once pressed his face up against the windscreen of my car while I was stopped at the traffic lights. There's a tradition in English Literature of writing such poems, where one type of person stands eyeball to eyeball with another type, and something passes between them. Not sure what happened to this guy - haven't seen him for a while. Perhaps he became a Lib Dem councillor in Heckmondwike.
We are going to focus on character and voice, which is, after all, how this poem has been labelled within the new AQA anthology. In his interview (see above) Armitage talks about a homeless man he used to see around town. On one memorable occasion the homelessman washed Armitage's windscreen and in that moment they looked into each other's eyes and shared something.
What marks this character out as special is that the Clown Punk is an outsider in every sense. First of all and perhaps most obviously he is a homeless person, who unfortunately is very much marginalised and dispossessed in our contemporary society.
The father tells the children to remember the 'clown punk' although his reason is unclear.
The philosophical tone of the poem would suggest that the speaker wants his children to look past the decay of the clown punk and see his inner tragedy and humanity.
The image of the windscreen wipers and rain in the final rhyming couplet suggests a washing away of the past, or a sense of renewal or cleansing.
The ambiguous ending of the poem is typical of an autobiographical poem where the poet is writing from memory.
In an interview with BBC Bradford and Yorkshire Armitage explained that the clown punk in the poem is based on a man Armitage saw around town:
I used to see around town quite a lot, who once pressed his face up against the windscreen of my car while I was stopped at the traffic lights. There's a tradition in English Literature of writing such poems, where one type of person stands eyeball to eyeball with another type, and something passes between them. Not sure what happened to this guy - haven't seen him for a while. Perhaps he became a Lib Dem councillor in Heckmondwike.
We are going to focus on character and voice, which is, after all, how this poem has been labelled within the new AQA anthology. In his interview (see above) Armitage talks about a homeless man he used to see around town. On one memorable occasion the homelessman washed Armitage's windscreen and in that moment they looked into each other's eyes and shared something.
What marks this character out as special is that the Clown Punk is an outsider in every sense. First of all and perhaps most obviously he is a homeless person, who unfortunately is very much marginalised and dispossessed in our contemporary society.