“They want to keep Madeleine alive
in lots of different ways,” he says.
“They want to keep the search for
her alive. I think also they want to
do things for her as any parent
would. On my part, like a lot of
people, it’s something that right
from the beginning I felt moved by.
“To function as a poet you’ve got to
have a certain amount of detachment.
But to make the poem work for the
McCanns, and for it to be meaningful
as a piece of writing, you need to
know what they think and to have a
bit more of a feeling for it. One of
the things I talked to Kate about
was how difficult it must be to keep
out that fear and that doubt and
darkness. We talked about the night
Madeleine went missing, those
terrible hours of darkness before it
became light again and they could
resume the search. It was like
meeting in the middle.”
He
asked for some details to inform his
poemand in response Gerry and
Katewrote him a couple of pages
about Madeleine, their thoughts and
feelings. Through that, Armitage
learnt of the candle they keep
burning in a lantern in their
village square.
“That’s how it works with a poem
sometimes, just one little thing.
I’d been looking at the photograph
that was used of Madeleine in the
campaign, where you can see the
fleck in her eye. I found myself
thinking about Jupiter. If you look
at Jupiter there’s something bottom
left that they call the great red
spot. It’s an anticyclone thousands
of miles across that looks like a
little eye to us, like a fleck in
the planet’s face. Then I started
thinking, is there life out there?
“That became the conceit for the
poem, looking out for signs of life
and the idea of keeping a light
burning here for life looking back
this way. The McCanns are
optimistic, I think you can call
that optimism hope. They have hope
and that’s what keeps them going.
One thing Kate will say is that they
don’t have any concrete evidence to
say that she’s dead. For as long as
that’s the case, they have a
parent’s duty and it’s their fierce
desire to keep looking for her. And
they have faith, they are strong
Roman Catholics. That sense of
lighting a candle, saying a prayer,
keeping hope burning — I was trying
to tap into that as well.”
The result, a sonnet, was also
informed by his own experience of
being the father of a ten-year-old
daughter, Armitage acknowledges.
“Parents can identify with the
McCanns losing something that is
your whole world, around which
things orbit. For most of us it’s an
unimaginable loss. That’s one of the
reasons that their story is so
powerful.”
The McCanns have described the poem
as “beautiful” and have told
Armitage that it captures many of
their feelings and the issues around
the loss of their daughter.
Armitage responds by saying that
this is what he does. His ability to
write with intimacy and yet without
intruding is partly because he is no
stranger to writing about topical
and sensitive events. His poem
Out of the Blue was a response
to the fifth anniversary of 9/11.
He
has given the McCanns a handwritten
copy of this poem that will be
auctioned tonight at an event to
raise funds for their campaign. He
will also sign over the copyright to
them. “They can do whatever they
want with it,” he says. “This is my
way of trying to do something.”
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