“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.”

www.findmadeleine.com

The Beacon
 

Dusk, doubt, the growing depth of an evening sky,
dark setting in as it did that night,
the forever vastness of outer space
reflecting the emptiness here inside,
shadowing, colouring, clouding the mind.

But somewhere out there there has to be life,
the distance only a matter of time,
a world like our own, its markings and shades
as uniquely formed as a daughter’s eye,
distinctly flecked, undeniably hers,
looking back this way through the miles and years

to a lantern cupping a golden blaze,
its candle alive with a fierce blonde flame
for the thousandth time, for as long as it takes.