Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy pens piece on Beckham injury
Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy pens piece on Beckham injury
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Tuesday, 16, Mar 2010 07:32
By Lewis Bazley.
The injury that will likely cause David Beckham to miss the World Cup has inspired a poem by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
The new verse, entitled Achilles, comes after the England midfielder suffered a tear in the tendon of the same name which required emergency surgery.
Speaking to Radio 4's The World at One, Duffy explained her new poem's comparisons between Beckham's injury and the Greek warrior who suffered a fatal blow to the same body part.
"He [Beckham] is almost a mythical figure himself, in popular culture," she commented.
"People, like Beckham, in their public lives are stories the rest of us follow.
"It's fascinating that the injury takes its name from Achilles... The whole point of Greek myths is the combination of triumph and tragedy that we follow in them."
Duffy remarked the most tragic aspect of Beckham's injury was the image of the footballer "unable to walk and crying on the side of the pitch".
"You just thought how all the money in the world and private planes can't sort this. It was a very moving moment," she added.
Achilles by Carol Ann Duffy:
Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.
Without him, it was prophesised, they would not take Troy.
Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
But when Odysseus came, with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball...
But then his heel, his heel, his heel...