All-time Poetry First XI
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
Poetry readers, you’d suspect, don’t like football; and football fans don’t read poetry. Since I haven’t read enough poetry and don’t know enough about football, I am uniquely under-qualified to put this side together, but someone had to do it; do drop me a line if you can suggest any changes.
In picking this XI, I’ve had to make some leaps of imagination; on the other hand, there is no simple set of criteria for getting selected. Some great writers had to be ruled out simply in order to avoid embarrassment. Yeats, for example, was famously so clumsy he could hardly walk in a straight line, let alone hit a crossfield pass, while John Keats’ constant illness keeps him out of the squad.
Goalkeeper: John Clare
Keepers, according to the stereotype, are always a bit crazy, and Clare, who, even before he entered an asylum, advocated capital punishment for anyone who cut down trees, is an obvious choice. On a less flippant note: John Ashbery argues that Clare’s work is an accurate kind of nature poetry because there are monotonous and repetitious stretches surrounding the most striking moments. Such an ability to concentrate hard while nothing happens and then pull off something brilliant is clearly suited to a place in goal.
Right Back: Simon Armitage
Armitage is on the national curriculum, he was commissioned to do the Gawain and the Green Knight translation, he’s being touted as the next Laureate. It’s not just that he’s a great poet with a good right foot; it’s more that it wouldn’t be the same without him.
Centre-Back: John Milton
A towering presence: imagine going into a challenge with this titan of epic religious poetry. Also good in the air, as evidenced by his ambition ‘with no middle flight…to soar’.
Centre-Back: Emily Dickinson
Very solid. And probably needs the exercise.
Left-Back: Anonymous
Sure, his/her output has slowed of late, but you can’t argue with a track record including two millennia of well-loved poems. And why left-back? Well, it’s a position that requires a high degree of versatility – Fabio Grosso is a good example of a box-to-box defender – and no-one has adapted to a greater range of voices and styles than this author.
Right Midfield: William Wordsworth
OK so partly ‘right wing’ because of his later drift to conservatism; but seriously, I think Wordsworth would be one of the most talented footballers in this list, and best suited to bombing down the touchlines. He was an accomplished ice-skater (legend has it that he would sign his name in the ice in giant letters at the end of a session), and the speed, agility and footwork involved there are the qualities of a great winger. Also those elegant and memorable line-breaks make me suspect he’d be an excellent crosser of the ball.
Centre Midfield: Edward Thomas and Robert Graves
My two favourite First World War poets – though warfare hardly dominates their writing – would surely have little trouble in a midfield battle, having seen action themselves. (Thomas, of course, was killed in France.) But it’s their differences, not their similarities, which make this an attractive pairing. Thomas, the poet of home and the countryside, would clearly sit in front of the defence, doing a similar job to Liverpool’s Mascherano. This would leave the flamboyant Graves free to make attacking forays, spouting gorgeous moonshine about seamonsters and goddesses.
Left Midfield: Charlotte Smith
The almost-forgotten Romantic, Smith’s life took in imprisonment, depression, family strife, debt, a terrible marriage, and the rearing of twelve children. Could she cut it on a cold wet Wednesday night away to Grimsby? Yes she could.
Centre Forward: Paul Muldoon
Guaranteed to lose his marker.
Centre Forward: Sean O’Brien
Author of presumably the best football-related heroic couplet: ‘Experience! There is no substitute / For working out why Andy Cole can’t shoot’. Go on then, Sean, let’s see if you can do better…
Manager: Kevin Keegan
The only poet here with professional experience at the highest level – as a player for Liverpool and manager of Newcastle and England. Keegan’s style has been an invigorating combination of the perceptive and the insane, balancing the brilliantly surreal – ‘I’d love to be a mole on the wall in the Arsenal dressing room at half-time’ – with the nonsensical – ‘The Germans only have one player under 22, and he’s 23’ – and an unmatched attention to detail: ‘Argentina won’t be at Euro 2000 because they’re from South America,’ he once observed. Famous for his motivational skills, KK is the only man who could pull this team together.
Daniel Hitchens
Dan Hitchens was a Foyle Young Poet in 2006, and won second place in the youth category for The Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation 2007.