Firstly, I must apologise for misleading you slightly. The title of this piece suggests that it is about a poem that has changed my life. This would be an over-dramatic representation. I can think of little that has literally changed my life. However, I can certainly name a thing or two that has had a significant impact on my life and has influenced the way I have thought about and acted in the world. I can say, with certainty, that James Fenton’s poem The Skip falls into this category.
The Skip is an allegorical poem that describes the decision of a discontented individual to cast their life away into a skip. They believe that doing so will improve their condition of dejection and dismay that characterises their current condition. The narrator then proceeds to get drunk, though nonetheless observes:
Without my life, the beer was just as foul,
The landlord still as filthy as his wife
That night, in a drunken stupor, the narrator glances at the skip and sees that someone has taken their life: ‘some bugger’d nicked it without my permission’. The following morning hits them hard. Amid their crushing hangover, they can still recognise what they think is their life, sodden on the bricks below. However, on closer inspection, they realise it is not their life; someone has swapped theirs out.
Someone had just exchanged my life for theirs.
Poor fool, I thought- I should have left a warning.
Some bastard saw my life and thought it nicer
Than what he had. Yet what he’d had seemed fine.
Fenton manages to tell this story with characteristic wit and comedic style. Yet within the lines lies the serious message which makes this poem so beautiful. It is a meditation on the nature of self-obsession and relativity. The narrator could not get rid of their life fast enough. They came to the clear conclusion that it was no longer worth having and better off on the skip. Yet even without it, things remained the same. They could not fathom why someone would pick up their life and leave their own behind that looked perfectly adequate.
This is why it has had such an impact on my life. I tend to romanticise the lives of those around me: friends who seemingly have everything put together, lovers who look so perfect, and celebrity figures who appear to have achieved the pinnacle. Social media has only served to exacerbate this problem. You can be sat in a melancholic daze while mindlessly scrolling and see all these smug people with their numerous, equally smug-looking friends in a state of perfect equilibrium and equanimity. You compare yourself to them, ultimately making yourself feel twice as bad.
Fenton’s fantastic prose acts as a reminder to see through this illusion. Everyone, at some point, is afflicted by something in their lives: something that makes them wish they could have another life. They want nothing more than to chuck their own away and start afresh. The realisation that you are not alone in this state of mind is empowering. No matter how bad you feel, remember: someone has been on the skip too. With this in mind, I implore you to peruse James Fenton’s brilliant and elusive poem to see if it makes as significant an impact on you as it did on me.
Image “Worcester & Birmingham Canal, Worcester – The Commandery – skip” by ell brown is licensed under CC BY 2.0.