My First Word Was Air? Simon Armitage Aims to Depollute the University of Sheffield

The Guardian gives us an airful, writing that a Simon Armitage poem has been attached to a building at the University of Sheffield, where it will be on display for one year. Not simply a public display, the poem, "In Praise of Air," is supposed to purify the air?

Armitage's In Praise of Air has been printed on a 10m by 20m piece of material which has been coated with microscopic pollution-eating particles of titanium dioxide. These use sunlight and oxygen to react with nitrogen oxide pollutants and purify the air, with the material said by the University of Sheffield, which devised it, to be capable of absorbing the pollution from 20 cars every day.

[...] "I write in praise of air. I was six or five / When a conjurer opened my knotted fist / and I held in my palm the whole of the sky. / I've carried it with me ever since," writes Armitage. "Let air be a major god, its being / and touch, its breast-milk always tilted / to the lips. Both dragonfly and Boeing / dangle in its see-through nothingness."

It ends: "My first word, everyone's first word, was air."

The bestselling author said he had "enjoyed working with the scientists and the science, trying to weave the message into the words, wanting to collaborate both conceptually and with the physical manifestation of the work".

[...]

Professor Tony Ryan, pro-vice-chancellor for science at Sheffield University, called the project "a fun collaboration between science and the arts to highlight a very serious issue of poor air quality in our towns and cities".

If you believe in the science, read on at The Guardian. And if you know the poet Alex Walton, you should ask him for his incredible response to the news, which we had the pleasure of reading last night. Par exemple:

Armitage reached on his car phone in 1996 had this to say, Poetry is the attempt to make the limited horizons of those and their dogs trapped in hot cars impeccably, mockingly clear, and to demolish the oopsy chaff out of dramatic sunsets...Those whose eyes swerve into poetry will know, in their final moments, that it's the fantastic surplus of available routes that really has made all the difference, watching the traffic on the viaduct in your lap but taking the interstate.