Poets Inspired by Titian - Simon armitage - Metamorphosis - Titian 2012 - The national gallery, London

I had some fantastic reproductions to work from and maybe that stopped me being too concerned about working with this masterpiece [Diana and Actaeon] that I’d had reduced down to A4. Plus I write when I’m travelling around, I do a lot of writing on the hoof, mental composition as much as sitting there. So, I don’t think you would have let me carry the painting round on the bus in Huddersfield! I think I’m drawn to this picture because of its story. It’s a freeze-frame, a moment is captured, but actually there’s a whole narrative there, both back and forth. What’s happened prior to that scene; what will happen afterwards? So, you arrive at that picture at the fulcrum moment. This is the very moment when everything turns, on which everything pivots. I’m not an artist. I don’t know how paintings really work, but I’m struck immediately by that picture in the way that I imagine Actaeon is struck by what he sees, and that’s why I’ve written it in the first person from his point of view. In my mind that phrase, ‘to feast the eyes upon’, was not very far away when I was writing. So, there’s a kind of blur in his mind and in my mind as to what exactly he’s looking at. I always find that I enjoy a painting more if I know something about it, whether it’s history or some of the mythology, either around the actual painting or the story within it. Some device to unlock it, because these old paintings are often derived from stories, and if you don’t know the full story you’re not really getting the full picture. I don’t really see the poem as an audio guide, rather as something that works in combination or in connection with the painting, but I’d like to think that the poem could exist in its own right just as the painting does.