The study reveals that the poetic obsession of Great Britain for the humble lawn

During the last half century, British poets, including Philip Larkin and Andrew Motion, led a “poetry of the microgenre lawn”, using the machine to explore childhood, masculinity, violence, dependence, mortality and much more, show new research.

The study, published in Critical Quarterlymaintains that tradition dates back to the poet of the 17th century Andrew Marvell, who used mowing – with a false – to comment on the violence of the English civil war.

“The poetry of the lawn had its point at the end of the 20th century, but would now have a good time for a revival,” said the study author, Francesca Gardner, the English faculty of Cambridge University and St Catharine's College.

“It may seem random to write poetry on mowing, but it is an excellent vehicle to explore our relationship with nature and with each other. Andrew Marvell wrote on mowing with false people after the English civil war and modern poets continue to use the lawns to think of their own ups and low.

“At a time of eco-crisis, conflicts and societal problems, another poet may be inspired to write one soon. They could reflect the growing anti-acreente or something else.”

In 1651, Andrew Marvell wrote a poem in which a mower accidentally killed a squat in grass. In “On Appleton House”, he wrote that the “edge” of the false was left “all bloody of her breast”. Gardner maintains that the poem makes us think of “untimely flesh” following powerful and indeed cycles, including seasons and war, which dominate our lives and determine our actions.

In 1979, another Hull poet, Philip Larkin, described the death of a hedgehog with his own motorized machine. In “The Tonde”, Larkin wrote that his mower had “” stalled, twice “” and that he found “a hedgehog to wedge against the blades, / killed”.

Inspired by “An Appleton House”, Larkin also admired the four poems of the Marvell mower: “The Mowers Song”, “Damon the Mower”, “The Mower Against Gardens” and “The Mower To The Glow-Worms”, describing them as “Charming and Exquisite in the pastoral tradition”, and Gardner underlines many similarities.

“Larkin had a deep awareness of pastoral and georgic poetry, which makes his poem more disturbing. Although he feels terrible to kill the hedgehog, which has really happened, his poem is disturbing because he presents a concerned affinity between natural and mechanics.”

“Whenever Larkin cuts the grass, he pushes back, he is therefore forced to use a machine that ends the work effectively and repeatedly. By reflecting the cruel and implacable forces of nature, as Larkin, commet their own acts of cruelty and violence.”

And yet, supports Gardner, it is often by their violence that the human mowers of these poems discover an ability to be prudent, sensitive and empathetic.

Larkin's is one of the best known poems in the United Kingdom and the United States, discussed by Gardner, but not the only one to tackle traumatic events.

In 2007, Andrew Motion founded a moving elegy for his father on memories happy to mow the lawn. On the other hand, “The Lawnmower” by Michael Laskey, “The Lawnmower” uses the machine to describe “despotism and neglect” paternal “, says Gardner.

“The mowing of a lawn is often considered a victory over nature, but these poems reflect a growing feeling that it is a pyrrhic or vile victory,” explains Gardner. “The father of Michael Laskey's poem is so determined to mow the straight lines that the merry disorder of life is missing with his children.”

The Laskey poem ends: “We are careful, / do as we told him, do not touch. / He must be invaded now, the grave.”

Gardner says: “British poets are very interested in the lawn as a nostalgic space, so lawns are often associated with childhood memories, in particular working fathers. The lawn is a sure domestic space, often suburban, in which unexpected violence can occur, as when Larkin kills a lift.”

Gardner's favorite poem is 2017 from Mark Waldron “I Wish I Loved Lawnmowers” which explores alienation, obsession and drug addiction. The speaker tells us that if he liked the lawn mowers, he would make a trip to the British Lawnmower Museum in Southport. But it does not do it and the poem ends: “Now, cracks the cocaine – which I loved.”

Most of the Gardner poems have studied have been written by recognized poets, but she also found examples written by fans of lawn mower. In 2013, FatOld Lawnmower Club magazine published La Parody de Tony Hopwood from the hymn “Morning broke” which deplores: “The mower broke, / mourning gardeners.

“The lawn mowers attract people to poetry as much as poetry attracts people to lawns,” explains Gardner.

Gardner stresses that most of the British lawn poems have been written by men, but have found examples of women mocking men obsessed by the border. In 2002, Fat Posted “A Lawnmer Widows Lament”, a poem by Peggy Miller, who opens: “I was once loved and darling by a man who was quite beautiful / But now I am the second violin of a Dennis or Ransomes.”

Francesca Gardner is an expert in first pastoral, georgic and “nature” first writing. She explains that the poetry of the British and American lawn is rooted in two forms of poetry of ancient nature. The pastoral form presents an idyllic form of a nature in which the shepherds walk in the fields and the ground gives them things.

On the other hand, georgic poetry implies that people have to work hard and use tools because nature is not so generous. Gardner underlines that “on Appleton House” by Andrew Marvell is an unusual mixture that is both pastoral and georgic.

“Marvell's inspired poets appreciate this confrontation between idyllic nature and what it takes to maintain the lawn as an ideal space, the georgic design of work,” explains Gardner.

The last lines of Larkin's poem were widely cited during the COVVI-19 pandemic: “We should be nice / when there is still time.”

“This remains a useful lesson, whether we are striving or not,” explains Gardner.