Simon Armitage

From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator, a spirited book that demystifies and celebrates the art of poetry today In A Vertical Art, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage takes a refreshingly common-sense approach to an art form that can easily lend itself to grand statements and hollow gestures. Questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, he offers sparkling new insights about poetry and an array of favorite poets. Based on Armitage's public lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry, A Vertical Art illuminates poets as varied as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, A. R. Ammons, and Claudia Rankine. The chapters are often delightfully sassy in their treatment, as in "Like, Elizabeth Bishop," in which Armitage dissects--and tallies--the poet's predilection for similes. He discusses Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize, poetic lists, poetry and the underworld, and the dilemmas of translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Armitage also pulls back the curtain on the unromantic realities of making a living as a contemporary poet, and ends the book with his own list of "Ninety-Five Theses" on the principles and practice of poetry. An appealingly personal book that explores the volatile and disputed definitions of poetry from the viewpoint of a practicing writer and dedicated reader, A Vertical Art makes an insightful and entertaining case for the power and potential of poetry today.

From the UK Poet Laureate and bestselling translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a complete verse translation of a spirited and humorous medieval English poem The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest literary works in Middle English, is a lively, anonymous comic poem about two birds who embark on a war of words in a wood, with a nearby poet reporting their argument in rhyming couplets, line by line and blow by blow. In this engaging and energetic verse translation, Simon Armitage captures the verve and humor of this dramatic tale with all the cut and thrust of the original. In an agile iambic tetrameter that skillfully amplifies the prosody and rhythm of the original, Armitage's translation moves entertainingly from the eloquent and philosophical to the ribald and ridiculous. Sounding at times like antagonists in a Twitter feud, the owl and the nightingale quarrel about a host of subjects that still resonate today--including love, marriage, identity, cultural background, class distinctions, and the right to be heard. Adding to the playful, raucous mood of the barb-trading birds is Armitage, who at one point inserts himself into the poem as a "magistrate . . . to adjudicate"--one who is "skilled with words & worldly wise / & frowns on every form of vice." Featuring the Middle English text on facing pages and an introduction by Armitage, this volume will delight readers of all ages.

By the Poet LaureateThe Alliterative Morte Arthure - the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 - was part of a medieval Arthurian revival which produced such masterpieces as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory's prose Morte D'Arthur. The Death of King Arthur deals in the cut-and-thrust of warfare and politics: the ever-topical matter of Britain's relationship with continental Europe, and of its military interests overseas. Simon Armitage is already the master of this alliterative music, as his earlier version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2006) so resourcefully and exuberantly showed. His new translation restores a neglected masterpiece of story-telling, by bringing vividly to life its entirely medieval mix of ruthlessness and restraint.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRYIt is the current Poet Laureate who has done the most to bring medieval poetry to contemporary audiences . . . in its own eccentric way, [The Owl and the Nightingale] is every bit as enticing as Gawain . . . it is arguably the greatest early Middle English poem we have. ProspectA graceful, elegant translation. GuardianFollowing his acclaimed translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, Simon Armitage shines light on another jewel of Middle English verse. In his highly engaging version, Armitage communicates the energy and humour of the tale with all the cut and thrust of the original. An unnamed narrator overhears a fiery verbal contest between the two eponymous birds, which moves entertainingly from the eloquent and philosophical to the ribald and ridiculous. The disputed issues still resonate - concerning identity, cultural habits, class distinctions and the right to be heard. Excerpts were featured in the BBC Radio 4 podcast, The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed. Including the lively illustrations of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, this is a book for the whole household to read and enjoy.

Growing up in Marsden among the hills of West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage has always associated his early poetic experiences with the night-time view from his bedroom window, those 'private, moonstruck observations' and the clockwork comings and goings in the village providing rich subject matter for his first poems. Decades on, that window continues to operate as both framework and focal point for the writing, the vastness of the surrounding moors always at his shoulder and forming a constant psychological backdrop, no matter how much time has elapsed and how distant those experiences.Magnetic Field brings together Armitage's Marsden poems, from his very first pamphlet to new work from a forthcoming collection. It offers personal insight into a preoccupation that shows no signs of fading, and his perspective on a locality he describes as 'transcendent and transgressive', a genuinely unique region forming a frontier territory between many different worlds. Magnetic Field also invites questions about the forging of identity, the precariousness of memory, and our attachment to certain places and the forces they exert.

Over the course of several years, Simon Armitage has written hundreds of poems for various projects, commissions, collaborations and events, which stand outside of his mainstream collections but now form a substantial body of work in their own right. They vary from single poems, such as 'Zodiac T Shirt', written to be performed at the launch of Beck's Song Reader, to the suite of ten poems about Branwell Brontë written at the time of the writer's bicentenary. Some have been published - such as the Walking Home and Walking Away poems - but the majority has not, and together they cover an eclectic array of subjects including sculpture, the environment, travel, drama, and media. Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic represents the nature and scale of Armitage's work - it is an important reflection of his public engagement as a poet and the astonishing range of his interests and talents.

When a mysterious green knight arrives unbidden at Camelot one Christmas, only the young and inexperienced Gawain is brave or foolhardy enough to take up his challenge . . .This story, first told in the late fourteenth century, is one of the most enthralling, enigmatic and beloved poems in the English language. Simon Armitage's version is meticulously responsive to the tact, sophistication and dramatic intensity of the original. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscape - physical, allegorical and acoustic - in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true translator.The poem's key episodes have been visualised into a series of bold, richly textured screen-prints by British artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins. They are reproduced here, alongside Armitage's revised text, to create a special edition of this marvellous classic.

'The most popular English poet since Larkin.' Sunday TimesAfter more than a decade and following his celebrated adventures in drama, translation, travel writing and prose poetry, Simon Armitage's eleventh collection of poems heralds a return to his trademark contemporary lyricism. The pieces in this multi-textured and moving volume are set against a backdrop of economic recession and social division, where mass media, the mass market and globalisation have made alienation a commonplace experience and where the solitary imagination drifts and conjures. The Unaccompanied documents a world on the brink, a world of unreliable seasons and unstable coordinates, where Odysseus stalks the aisles of cut-price supermarkets in search of direction, where the star of Bethlehem rises over industrial Yorkshire, and where alarm bells for ailing communities go unheeded or unheard. Looking for certainty the mind gravitates to recollections of upbringing and family, only to encounter more unrecoverable worlds, shaped as ever through Armitage's gifts for clarity and detail as well as his characteristic dead-pan wit. Insightful, relevant and empathetic, these poems confirm The Unaccompanied as a bold new statement of intent by one of our most respected and recognised living poets. 'A writer who has had a game-changing influence on his contemporaries.' Guardian'Armitage is that rare beast: a poet whose work is ambitious, accomplished and complex as well as popular.' Sunday Telegraph'The best poet of his generation.' Craig Raine, Observer

A subject-specific guide for teachers to supplement professional development and provide resources for lesson planning. Approaches to learning and teaching Geography is the result of close collaboration between Cambridge University Press and Cambridge International Examinations. Considering the local and global contexts when planning and teaching an international syllabus, the title presents ideas for Geography with practical examples that help put theory into context. Teachers can download online tools for lesson planning from our website. This book is ideal support for those studying professional development qualifications or international PGCEs.

A new collection from the one of the greatest contemporary English poets, published by Propolis, one of the smallest contemporary English publishers...

Simon Armitage is rightly celebrated as one of the country's most original and engaging poets; but he is also an adaptor and translator of some of our most important epics, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Death of King Arthur and Homer's Odyssey. The latter, originally a commission for BBC Radio, rendered the classical tale with all the flare, wit and engagement that we have come to expect from this most distinctive of contemporary authors, and in so doing brought Odysseus's return from the Trojan War memorably to life.

Simon Armitage - poet, playwright, broadcaster and Professor of Poetry at Oxford University - has been commissioned by 14-18 Now to write a sequence of poems in response to photographs (aerial, oblique and panoramic) of areas associated with the Battle of the Somme, which took place on the Western Front between July to November 1916.

Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining Walking Home, the restless poet has followed up that journey with a walk of the same distance but through the very opposite terrain and direction far from home. In Walking Away Simon Armitage swaps the moorland uplands of the north for the coastal fringes of Britain's south west, once again giving readings every night, but this time through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, taking poetry into distant communities and tourist hot-spots, busking his way from start to finsh.From the surreal pleasuredome of Minehead Butlins to a smoke-filled roundhouse on the Penwith Peninsula then out to the Isles of Scilly and beyond, Armitage tackles this personal Odyssey with all the poetic reflection and personal wit we've come to expect of one of Britain's best loved and most popular writers.

A high-ranking government minister with a colourful past is sent on a diplomatic mission to Istanbul. When his trip ends up in a bar-room brawl, he becomes Europe's most wanted man overnight. Chased by the authorities, damned by religious leaders, pursued by those looking for vengeance and head-hunted by fanatics, his odyssey begins. Plunged into the ancient past, Odysseus must now contend with all the unworldly beings and unnatural phenomena that stand in his way. The Cyclops, the Sirens, witches, whirlpools and flesh-eating armies must all be overcome in the struggle for survival and the long voyage back home. Simon Armitage's The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead premiered at the Liverpool Everyman in September 2015 then toured the UK in a co-production with English Touring Theatre.

Following his highly acclaimed dramatization of the Odyssey, Simon Armitage here takes on the fate of Troy, bringing Homer s Iliad to life with refreshing imaginative vision. In the final days of the Trojan War, the Trojans and the Greeks are caught in a bitter stalemate. Exhausted and desperate after ten years of warfare, gods and men battle among themselves for the glory of recognition and a hand in victory. Cleverly intertwining the Iliad and the Aeneid, Armitage poetically narrates the tale of Troy to its dire end, evoking a world plagued by deceit, conflict, and a deadly predilection for pride and envy. As with the Odyssey, Armitage reveals the echoes of ancient myth in our contemporary war-torn landscape, and reinvigorates the classic epics with adventure, passion, and, surprisingly, Shakespearean wit. Praise for The Odyssey: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer s Epic So superb. . . . Armitage s love of the Greek epic is evident in almost every line. New York Times"

Vilken medlem i Beatles är panda? Hur ska en apotekare inte bete sig? Vad har landsortens konstelit för sig när ingen ser på? Här finns sagor som är skräckhistorier som är vackra ögonblick - allt med ett absolut gehör för det komiska. Se stärnor är en hybrid mellan prosapesi och novell.

The Poetry Business Anthology of New Contemporary Poets.

The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry humor all his own, has taken on Britain's version of our Appalachian Trail: the Pennine Way. Walking "the backbone of England" by day (accompanied by friends, family, strangers, dogs, the unpredictable English weather, and a backpack full of Mars Bars), each evening he gives a poetry reading in a different village in exchange for a bed. Armitage reflects on the inextricable link between freedom and fear as well as the poet's place in our bustling world. In Armitage's own words, "to embark on the walk is to surrender to its lore and submit to its logic, and to take up a challenge against the self."

The newly drawn Stanza Stones Trail runs through forty-seven miles of the Pennine region, some of the most strikingly varied landscape in the world. The terrain bears the deep scars of industrial exploitation, as well as those less obvious: the signs left by a hundred local generations are carved into the region's abounding rocks. Simon Armitage was born and raised here, in the village of Marsden, and in 2012 he was commissioned through the Ilkley Literature Festival to write site-specific poetry. Armitage composed six new poems on his Pennine walks and, with the help of local expert Tom Lonsdale and letter-carver Pip Hall, found extraordinary, secluded sites and saw his words carved into stone. This book is a record of that journey, containing the poems and the accounts of Lonsdale and Hall. The many layers of stone and sediment found beneath the surface of the rock reflect the drama of the landscape itself. Covered in decades of industrial soot and grime, the colours released by the carver's tools will likely never return to shades of black and grey, but become a small reminder of the changes that our natural environment undergoes, and the marks, small and large, of humankind.