The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast: Amy Clampitt

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Frank finds the beauty in Amy Clampitt's poetry and written-off cars. The poem referenced is ‘Salvage’ from ‘The Kingfisher’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast today. Well let me tell you first of all about an act of love at first sight. I don't know if you believe in love at first sight, but this is what happened. I was just flicking through an online poetry app, just a couple of poems here and there by various poets. And I saw a name, Amy Clampett, a poet I've never heard of. And there was just one poem by Amy called Beach Glass. And I just thought, yes, I love Amy Clampett she's gonna go into my

favorite poets and I read more Amy and I wasn't disappointed and it's a sort of a rich lustrous baroque style someone who luxuriates in language and that can be fantastic. Amy Clampett was an American poet. Maybe a poet is always a poet whether they're alive or dead but anyway an American poet she was born in 1920 and died in 1994. She didn't have her first full-length collection of poetry published until she was 63 years of age. You see you guys out there, there is still hope. So how come she was so late to the game? Well, initially she wanted to be a novelist.

So she wrote three novels, couldn't get them published. Then she thought maybe I can write plays, so she wrote some plays. They didn't get staged. And then this is the story, and I do love an origin story, whether it's Batman or a poet. Amy Clampett said she was doing the the cultural tourism thing. She was looking at the ruins of a religious building and she was in the cloister when suddenly, it's good isn't it so far, a beam of light fell on her. Now for most people they just think, oh god that's a bit bright, but poets obviously see deep deep things.

And it fell on her her she felt it was significant she felt changed in some way by this beam of light and she wrote up the experience in her journal when she got back home or to the hotel and the entry in the journal she says came out as poetry with line breaks and rhythms and even some rhymes. It just happened. And she said it wasn't, God, the sirens early today. She said it wasn't a great poem by any means,

but it was a poem. And then she felt that maybe she should abandon the novels and plays and become a poet and that seemed to be confirmed when she was at an anti-Vietnam War protest outside the White House in 1971 and the protesters were given placards and asked to write their professions on. So I suppose people from the press would get a sense of the wide stretch of society who were anti the Vietnam War and she wrote Poet on that placard and then she kind of knew that that's what she was. However, it seems she hadn't completely given up

on the other aspirations, because she got a job, I will get to the poetry in a minute, but I just wanna give you a quick blast of biography on Amy Clampy, just in case you've never heard of her. So she got a job at a publishers, and I suppose any writer who works at a publishers must think,

well I wonder if it's worth them having a look at my stuff. So she showed her boss her novels, he didn't like them. She showed her boss her plays, he didn't like them. And finally she showed him some of her poems. He had a contact on the New Yorker magazine and the poems were published before she even knew he'd sent them off. And then she was away. Her first full collection, as I said, she was 63 in 1983 and it was called Kingfisher and the poem I want to look at today is from Kingfisher and it's called Salvage. Salvage is when you rescue discarded material and like I say it's incredibly her language. Oh man it makes me happy is what it does. It's as simple as that, it makes me happy. And it makes me think, but thinking makes me happy generally speaking.

It's seven stanzas, each one of five irregular lines. I'm going to give you the first one. Now I'm going to give you the whole stanza. It ends beginning a new thought. So I'm going to leave you sort of mid thought at the end. But there's a I want to make a point about that. You know me, I like to make a point. Here we go. Daily the cortege of crumpled defunct cars goes by by the lasagna layered flatbed trocload. Hard top and that hard top is obviously the beginning of the next thought. So daily the cortege of crumpled defunct cars. So it's like a cortege, like a funeral procession of these cars that are defunct. Cars that are no longer of use, that have been crumpled up and they're being taken away to the scrapyard. Daily the cortege of crumpled defunct cars goes by by the lasagna layered flatbed truckload. What I love about that is listening to this bit, Daily the cortege of crumpled defunct

cars goes by by the lasagna layered flatbed truckload. Those two by's next to each other say bye bye as the cars leave. That can't be an accident, it's a poet. Do you get that? Daily the Cortege of Crompool Defonck cars goes by by the lasagna layered flatbed trot load. The lasagna layered flatbed trot load. You've seen these things on the motorway where there's like cars, there's a layer of cars and then there's like another bit of the truck and then there's another layer of cars on top of that. Like a lasagna, the way pasta is layered up on the lasagna. This is one five line stanza and we've got funeral imagery and pasta imagery in that

same five lines. It's a massive dog fight happening outside my apartment. But I'd rather be here. That's how exciting I find poetry. More exciting than a dogfight. That's how I'm going to describe poetry at some point in the future when asked. So just give you that one again daily the cortege of crumpled and I think those two C sounds makes you feel that this thing is processing daily the cortegeege of crumpled, defunct cars

goes by by the lasagne layered flatbed truckloads and I think the flatbed of the truck sounds very smooth and orderly and practical and functional doesn't it? And in contrast with these cars which are now crumpled and defunct, even those words crumpled and defunct to me sound a bit crumpled. It's the sharp edges of those Cs and Ts crumpled and defunct. So as I say, then says, after the, by the lasagne layered flatbed troc load, hardtop is the last word of the stanza. That's obviously the beginning of a new thought, which is going to go into the next stanza. Why does she do that? Let me tell you, none of these, the seven stanzas in this poem

end with a full stop, except for the last one when the poem itself ends. And I think because she's talking about a cortege, because she's talking about a procession that she's watching of these cars going past, and that's inspired the poem, these five line stanzas are in a procession. The reason they don't end is because she wants to take us on to the next one and on to the next one. So she's constantly beginning a new thought at the end of a stanza to move us on to the next stanza and then again to move us on just like that procession of cars. She's simulating what she sees with what she writes.

Okay, so I'm going to read the next chart. What I'm not going to do, I think, is stick so strongly to the stanzas now, because they all end with a new idea beginning. I'm going to try and give you the ideas as we go. You'll see what I mean. I'll probably change my mind halfway through anyway. That's how this podcast goes. Hard top. That was how that first answer ended and it goes into the second. Hard top reverting to tar smudge. Wack shine and teaked to crusted wine press smear, Windshield battered to intact ice tint, A rarity into the next stanza, Fresh from the pleistocene. Don't panic, it's going to be okay.

So these three examples of what she's seen on this flatbed truck, these crumpled cars, and they all seem to me to be examples of confident grand ideas which have been battered by aging, like so many confident grand ideas. So hard top, the very sound of that sounds permanent doesn't it? Hard top, you know it's a hard top car, hard top reverting to tar smudge, so it's been squashed into what looks like just that gonk. Wack shine, antiqued to crusted Wine Press Smear I don't know if Antiqued is a verb Well it is if Amy wants it to be as far as I'm concerned

But it's brilliant Wack Shine, someone really looking after this car, their pride and joy The Wack Shine, now Ant to crusted wine press smear. And the word smear makes it sound, doesn't it? Dirty, soiling. The Wack Shine has been reduced to that. The smears it was trying to get rid of, it's now become that smear. A wine press smear, a stain like the way over time grapes stain a wine press.

And the last one of these images, windshield battered to intact ice tint, a rarity, on to the next hands up, fresh from the pleistocene Pleistocene is how I think you say that in America the pleistocene being an epoch a glacial epoch so when the world was covered in ice certainly the northern bit Okay, so This idea of all this grandeur and cars also so represent, don't they, the American dream. Big glitzy gas-gozzling cars and now that they are defunct, as she calls them, now that they're crumpled, now all these things have been so reduced, all their glory has gone.

Hard top reverting to tar smudge. Wack shine antique to crusted winepress smear. Windshield battered to intact ice tint. Ice tint is the film that you can put on a windshield to give it a slight tint. Ice tint is a very sort of subtle blue, very very nuanced, but now that windshield's been battered to intact ice tint, a rarity fresh from the Pleistocene. So only the film really has held up. There's a few bits of glass stuck to it, but the film that was placed on it, the ice tint, is sort of holding it together just about. And as she says, a rarity fresh from the Pleistocene, as if it came from the Ice Age, which is I think a pawn on the ice tint product, but also the fragments of glass sticking to the film looking like ice.

And a rarity fresh from the Pleistocene makes the shattered windscreen sound as if it was some interesting fossil. The thing is, of course, most people don't see old, defunct cars, like they see fossils from a bygone age. Fossils are seen as very interesting. These cars are just seen as scrap, unless you're a poet and you can see the beauty in them, which she is about to confess. So that third stanza begins fresh from the Pleistocene. Like I say, she wants to keep us moving forward.

So she does this enjambment, this idea of the sentence moving from one line to the next. But across the stanzas, we're not allowed to stop. We have to keep moving like the cars. So the second line of that stanza after Fresh from the Pleistocene introduces a more personal note. I like it. Privately I find aesthetic satisfaction in the ceremonial removals, new stanza, from the category of received ideas.

Wow. Privately, I find aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas. I love it so much so privately well first of all she says I like it very very simple I like it she's watching all this she's described it to us as all these broken dreams of these car owners who've shined and bought these hardtop cars. Siren number two guys. I should say I'm recording this on a bank holiday Monday when it gets even livelier in this area. I like it she says and isn't after all

those grand words the simplicity, I like it. These smashed up cars all wrecked and representing the dreams of their owners now gone and just they're now they're discarded. But they're not discarded by me because I like them. Privately, I find aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas. So what are the received ideas? Well, it's the whole mainstream idea of what these cars are for and why they're important, why they're part of the American dream, I suppose, and why consequently, when they no longer serve their purpose,

when they no longer operate and function as they were supposed to, they've got to go. I don't even want to see them now. I just want to see shiny, big American cars. But not Amy. I like it. Privately I find aesthetic satisfaction in these, and this is so the richness of her language, in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas. And I think what she's saying here with her private list, she's sort of whispering to us almost,

I like it. She's almost saying, isn't she? Most people would say this and think, oh, what a mess, get them off to the scrapyard. But I'm a poet, I'm thinking there's something really beautiful about these cars, not just physically, but what they represent. They now represent sort of fall and grandeur but a new beauty. They've taken on a new beauty in their ruin and not many people can see that. That is not a received idea that these cars are

beautiful. It's like people who like brutalist architecture. Most people in the mainstream would say what that ugly concrete car park and the fan of brutalism is saying no but I see something really special in it and that's what Amy is seeing here. She loves these defunct cars because she has a sort of alternative view. Of course she does, she's a poet. Privately, I find aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals. Ceremonial because they're in this funeral procession, this cortege of crumpled, defunct cast. I find aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas.

So they're moving away from mainstream appreciation, these cars, from the days when they were just flash cars. They're moving into alternative appreciation, into a different world, a sort of underworld of poets and artists and people like that who can see beauty in this, whereas the mainstream, most people could only see their beauty when they were driving them to work. Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking?

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we're mid-fourth stanza now, to regions where pigeons, svelte-smoked velvet limousines, taxiing in whirly gigs, reclaim a parking lot. So they're going to a place where pigeons are in charge, where pigeons are dominant. In other words, a place is sort of a waste ground type of a place,

a parking lot that's just used for scrap and pigeons seem to like those alternative corners of towns and cities. Okay, so I'm going to give you the whole thing from there. I like it. Privately I find aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas to regions where pigeons, svelts, smoke velvet limousines, taxiing in whirly geeks, reclaim a parking lot. So what we're doing from here on in the poem, we are moving like these cars,

we are moving to a different region and I think we are moving to the region of the alternative, of the anti-obvious. We are moving, if you like, to a sort of artistic region, a poetic region, away from a world that loves cars to a world that loves crumple cars more than ever. I don't know if it's possible to like poetry and cars. I would say those two passions are mutually exclusive, but perhaps that's wrong. Answers on a postcard. So these pigeons, these cars are off to regions regions where pigeons and then a description of pigeons now pigeons Normally seen I think as sort of disease written

vermin and now redefined by Amy Clampett to regions where pigeons svelte smoke velvet limousines. That's how she describes pigeons. Svelte, so slim, smoke velvet limousines. So they're like fancy cars in this world that we're moving to now, the world of the ruined, of the no longer needed.

Taxiing in whirly gigs reclaim a parking lot. So she's imagining these pigeons taxiing in whirly gigs, flying slowly in circles and reclaiming a parking lot, the parking lot that these ruined cars are now heading for to be dumped there. So already that's another alternative view. First of all she tells us she likes the ceremonial removals of these cars and then to a place where pigeons are in charge because there's not many people there because no one wants to be around the rubbish and so she's now seeing pigeons in a very positive light

and now the next character of this we've had the cars we've had the pigeons and now that parking lot that we're at and the the bag-laden hermit woman, disencombed of a greater incubus, the crush of unexamined attitudes, stoutly follows her routine. So we're moving with the cars to this sort of graveyard for old cars, this parking lot where the pigeons have a pretty much a free rein and also there there is a bag laden hermit woman, you know the sort of homeless woman who carries loads and loads of bags with we don't know what in them disencombed of a greater

incubus the crush of unexamined attitudes Oh man, so she's got all these bags So she's carrying all these bags which makes you think oh oh God, does she carry those all day? But she's disencumbered, so she doesn't have to carry. She's disencumbered of a greater incubus. An incubus, you must have seen that painting, it's a famous gothic image. An incubus, it's a sort of a demon who comes in the night and sits on the sleeper and I think the idea is they make

Nightmares happen. There's a very famous painting of someone sleeping with this Vile creature atop them. So she's got these bags the hermit woman disencombed of a greater incubus. So something that was sitting on her that she did have to bear has gone. She's become disencombed by that. She's no longer held back by it and she's no longer restrained by it. So what is it?

She's got all these heavy bags. The bag laden hermit woman, disencombed of a greater incubus. So this thing that had sat on her has now gone. What is it? The crush of unexamined attitudes. So she, this bag laden hermit woman, this homeless woman might have a lot of physical stuff to carry, but what she doesn't have to deal with is the crush of unexamined attitudes sitting on us. So she doesn't have to put up with all those unexamined ideas, all that mainstream stuff all the things that you're supposed to think and you're supposed to feel that society tells you it's I've used this phrase before it's that thing of worshipping at the altar of the great

God normal and that's where many many of us kneel day after day but not this woman the Bagladen hermit woman disencombed of a greater incubus the crush of unexamined attitudes so because she's homeless because she's on her own she's a hermit she doesn't have to worry about all those social pressures. She's like the cars, isn't she? She doesn't have to care anymore because she doesn't have to fill a function that society wants her to fulfill. She doesn't have to serve the purpose that people feel she should be serving, just like those cars. She's been discarded. Maybe this poem is called salvage because Amy Clampett is salvaging these cars

by saying they're not just ruins, they are beautiful and she's salvaging the pigeons to some extent. They're not vermin, they are svelte, smoke velvet limousines that have a tremendous sort of freedom and hang around in alternative zones and this bag laden hermit woman who you might walk past in the street and just try to get past as fast as you can she is salvaging all these She is salvaging all these things and saying, don't dismiss this as junk. There is value in those beautiful crumpled cars.

There's value in those carefree pigeons and there's value in this hermit woman. So the crush of unexamined attitudes, that's why, it's those received ideas we heard about before when she said that the, she found aesthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the category of received ideas. That is what the hermit woman, she's got away from unexamined attitudes, the same as received ideas, if you like. They have all got away from the great God normal and Amy is celebrating the alternative mindset. So this woman, I'm going to give it to you one more time, the Bagladen Hermit woman, disincombed of a greater incubus, the crush of unexamined attitudes, stoutly follows her

routine, mining the mountain sides of our daily refuse for artifacts. So she is looking in the rubbish piles. She's looking in bins. We've all seen homeless people doing this maybe seen and finding things that we've dismissed as rubbish and Have more value than we might think just like those cars Stotely follows her routine and I think I want to underline her. So she has a routine but it's not a routine that's been imposed on her by society, by unexamined attitudes, by received ideas. It's her

routine and her routine what she likes doing is mining the mountain sides of our daily refuse. So these great mounds of rubbish physically, I suppose, and metaphorically. She likes looking in those places that other people don't want to look. It's hard to fight the idea, isn't it, that Amy is seeing some affinity with the hermit woman because she's doing that in this poem she's looking at the crumple car she's looking at the pigeon she's looking at the hermit woman she is mining the mountainsides of our daily refuge the things that we don't want around us. And she's finding beauty and interesting stuff there, as does the hermit woman.

So she's mining the mountain sides of our daily refuge for artifacts. And then we're in the last stanza now. Subversive, reestablishing with each arcane trash basket dig, subversive, re-establishing with each arcane trash basket dig the pleasures of the ruined. So the hermit woman is subversive, she's not doing what most people do, she's got her own routine. Re-establishing with each arcane trash basket dig, arcane I think to do with secret mysterious knowledge. So every time she goes into a trash basket, a litter bin as we would call it, she is looking for something which is a mystery to us. Why would she want to go looking in a bin? But because she is subversive, she's different, she's

alternative. She, like the speaker in this poem, sees magic in what we might see as trash and that's what's exciting about her and that's what's challenging to the mainstream. Subversive re-establishing with each arcane trash basket dig the pleasures of the ruined. So I think the suggestion is that the ruined, that ruin is freeing in some way. This woman has seemingly failed in society and has found a freedom and an individuality and an independence from that. The cars have taken on a new beauty.

In the eyes of the poet, the pigeons have a sort of a glamour to them. And I think this is at the very, very heart of poetry, this. It's about seeing things that others don't see, valuing things that others don't value. So the poem, if you like, gives a home to the homeless. It gives a home to the crumpled cars and to the pigeons. It's saying, you know what, I like this better than what most people like. And there is real beauty in this hermit woman, there is real beauty in those crumpled cars and in pigeons.

And if you can find the poetic eye, this hermit woman there is real beauty in those crumpled cars and in pigeons and if you can find the poetic eye you will see it too and that is my parting message to you. Amy Clampett is brilliant. When I told you I fell in love at first sight the poem I read was a poem called Beach Glass which you might want to check out but there's loads of great Amy Clampett poems and so rich so colourful and oh man you can luxuriate in them go do it so thank you for listening to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast. Don't forget to follow so you never miss an episode. Imagine that. See you next week.