remains

simon armitage

Published: 2013

Birth - Death: 1963 - ?

Monarch: Elizabeth II

Prime Minister: David Cameron (Conservative)

Nationality: English

Remains is taken from Armitage's collection 'The Not Dead' poems based on testimonies of ex-soldiers. It is thought that the speaker is involved in The Gulf War which took place in 1990-1991. Originally broadcast a year ago in a Channel 4 documentary of the same name, The Not Dead is a short collection of war poems written, not in battle, but as a response to the testimonies of ex-soldiers featured in the program. Each poem focuses on a flashback scene one of the ex-soldiers has struggled to forget. "Remains" is written for someone who served in Basra and tries to capture the moment when he shot a man looting a bank.

who's the poem about?

Remains is based off a person named Robert Tromans.

Tromans served in the Iraq War.

Tromans remembered when he was younger and how people celebrated when people came back from the Falklands War and was inspired to join the army.

He compared being in a war zone to having constant anxiety. He suffered PTSD, he talks about how the army were not supportive of him even after he killed someone for the first time.

Eventually he quit the army and he resorted to drugs and alcohol.

Robert Tromans was said to be “tricky,” as he was “the most cautious,” as he was worried to be “embarrassed and exposed in public to his friends,” he was said to be the “least poetic,” by Armitage.

what's the iraq war?

The Iraq War lasted from 20 March 2003 to 18 December 2011.

The Iraq war was named ‘Blair’s War’ who was the prime minister at the time.

No one in Britain wanted to have this war and many people were against assisting America in this war.

It was a war that was fought due to resources, for example: oil.

It was not treated with the same honour as previous wars and soldiers were not celebrated when arriving back home.

The Iraq war caused a high percentage of civilian casualties and forget that Iraq lost a lot of cultural heritage sites in the frequent bombings.

Many questioned why Britain was even involved.

Over 100 people were killed daily, including soldiers on both sides and civilians. 4 million people were forced to leave the country, leaving them homeless.

who is simon armitage

Simon Armitage is a poet, playwright, novelist, childminder and lead singer of the Scaremongers.

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, where he still lives.

He earned a BA from Portsmouth University in geography, and an MS in social work from Manchester University, where he studied the impact of televised violence on young offenders.

He worked as a probation officer for six years before focusing on poetry.

In 2015, he was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry and in 2017 he was appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

Armitage’s formally assured, often darkly comic poetry is influenced by the work of Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, and Philip Larkin.

Armitage has also performed as a member of the band The Scaremongers.

He has taught at the University of Leeds, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Manchester Metropolitan University.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature.

The recipient of numerous honours and awards, Armitage was named the Millennium Poet in 1999 and a Commander of the British Empire in 2010. In 2014 he was awarded the Cholmondeley Award.

The poet writes a lot of monologues that have strong first-person narrators, his poems normally look at individuals and characters as the main focus.

He always writes in a strong narrative tone, using colloquial language as if mid-conversation.

Married to Sue Roberts and had a child named Emily Armitage.

society & politics

There was a stigma against mental health and revealing emotions, people labelled it as just being sad, etc.
We remember and honour the soldiers who are dead but not those who are living with mental health issues such as PTSD, due to conflict in war.
At least 13,000 of our war heroes are homeless after leaving the military, a Sunday People probe reveals.
Many veterans suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) are homeless due to reasons such as: disabilities (mental and/or physical), substance abuse (drugs and/or alcohol), family breakdown, joblessness and poverty, lack of low-cost housing, government policy, etc.