Poem Review: The Manhunt

Simon Armitage is known by many GCSE English Literature students as the God of the AQA Anthology booklet. His poetry is featured in thousands of copies around the country and The Manhunt (also known as Laura’s Poem) is one of them.

The Manhunt follows a relationship damaged by the effects of war. Armitage describes in depth the injuries, both physical and mental, of a husband whose wife is searching for him underneath all of his battle wounds. It is a poem filled with compassion and pain but one that has a theme blowing all others out of the water: love.

Armitage’s protagonist in the poem describes her lover’s ‘frozen river which ran through his face’, the ‘blown hinge of his lower jaw’ and his ‘damaged, porcelain collarbone’ as she traces her way through his body slowly and with care, evoking a multitude of emotions from the reader. Somehow, The Manhunt manages to captivate its readers the whole way through the poem as you feel you are on this journey with the couple – a journey that defines a relationship. And it is a journey that we are willing to follow no matter what.

Perhaps the most powerful part of Armitage’s poem is the ‘unexploded mine buried deep in his mind’, recognising the harrowing mental effects of soldiers who experience war and conflict abroad. In particular, it seems that Armitage is drawing attention to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that thousands of soldiers experience upon their return from wars. The disorder includes horrific nightmares and flashbacks to a particularly painful event that caused some kind of harm to the victim and it is clear that the ‘unexploded mine’ is related to the husband’s PTSD.

The Manhunt is by far the most interesting and emotionally deep poem in the whole of the Anthology and most of Armitage’s work. Something about the emotions and relationship shared between the couple is fresh and new to modern-day poetry, making Armitage’s piece stand out because it is gracefully different.