Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014
Buy from Faber When Simon Armitage burst on to the poetry scene in 1989 with his spectacular debut Zoom!, readers were introduced to an exceptional new talent who would reshape the landscape of contemporary poetry in the years to come. Now, twenty-five years on, Simon Armitage’s reputation as one of the nation’s most original, most respected […]
Stanza Stones
Black Roses
Buy from Pomona Twenty-year-old Sophie was attacked in a Lancashire park in 2007 and died several days later. The ferocity of the assault caused distress and outrage when reported by the international media and led to the creation of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, a charity opposed to all forms of hate crime and victimisation. Black […]
The Death of King Arthur
Buy from Faber A Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlsted for 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize, The Making of Arthur (BBC4, 2010) followed the Norman influence on Arthurian literature. Written and presented by Simon Armitage for the BBC’s Norman Season. Directed by Matt Hill. The Alliterative Morte Arthure – the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 […]
The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right
Shortlisted for the 2010 Michael Marks Award. Reprinted and still available from The Poetry Business. “Returning to the pamphlet form, and the pamphlet publisher, which first launched Simon Armitage s remarkable career the variety in this collection almost feels like a lap of honour. Quietly ironised monologues, flashes of startlingly apt imagery, and a dry but […]
Seeing Stars
Buy from Faber A Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize Simon Armitage’s 2010 collection is by turns a voice and a chorus: a hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales. Here comes everybody: Snoobie and Carla, Lippincott, Wittmann, Yoshioka, Bambuck, Dr Amsterdam, Preminger. The man whose wife […]
The Not Dead
The poems in this book were originally aired on a Channel 4 documentary film of the same name, shown in the summer of 2007. They focus on the testimonies of veterans of the Gulf, Bosnia and Malayan wars – ex-soldiers who have seldom been heard before. The Not Dead received excellent reviews in the press […]
Out of the Blue
Buy from Enitharmon The poems in this volume were written in response to three anniversaries relating to three separate conflicts. Told from the point of view of an English trader working in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the poem-film Out of the Blue was commissioned by Channel 5. It was broadcast five years after the […]
Twilight Readings
Buy from Northern Arts Bookshop Acclaimed West Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage has enjoyed a relationship with Yorkshire Sculpture Park for several decades, and is noted for his admiration of the work of YSP resident Andy Goldsworthy. To mark the thirtieth anniversary of its foundation in 1977, Yorkshire Sculpture Park gave Armitage himself a residency. Armitage noted […]
Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid
Buy from Faber Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize Tyrannosaurus Rex versus The Corduroy Kid engages with the matter of ‘Merrie England’. The poet’s preoccupation with utopias and new republics, with visions and intimations, is in the service of a sharpened focus upon this island – ‘here at the Empire’s end’ – just as his evolutionary […]