Simon Armitage

This is a collection of Marsden poems from Simon Armitage.

This text is the first major anthology published which surveys poetry from Britain and Ireland published in the half-century since the Second World War.

With an introduction by Simon Armitage, this book is an anthology arranged to show how the short poem (defined here as shorter than a sonnet) can tell a story, present a complex argument, and be packed with as much passion, wisdom and music as any more extended piece of writing.

Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining 'Walking Home', Simon Armitage 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', he 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...

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. 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,...

In Simon Armitage's work, there has always been a territory he identifies as 'a twilight zone' where poetry and song lyric converge. He has explored it through numerous enterprises - most recently with the 'ambient post-rock' band Land Yacht Regatta. Many of the lyrics collected here were written for LYR. Others are drawn from Armitage's days with the DIY indie band The Scaremongers, various film and theatre productions including 'Songbirds' and the...

'Blossomise' celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholy disappearance. Full of energetic leaps of imagination and language, the twenty-two poems hopscotch between intense momentary haikus that honour the Japanese traditions of the blossom festival and stand-alone lyrical pieces that take in the stylistic tones of ballads, hymns, songs, prayers and nursery rhymes. From a crashed Ford Capri wrapped...

In 2007 Sophie Lancaster, a 20-year-old 'goth', was attacked and killed in a Lancashire park by a gang of feral youths. Poet Simon Armitage wrote the long prose-poem 'Black Roses' about the incident. Five years after the attack, the piece is reproduced in this book.

A combination of verse from Simon Armitage and prose from Jeff Young lends a voice to the chain of events depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry. This production chronicles the history surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the ascension of Duke William of Normandy to the English throne. Harold, Duke of Wessex, takes the English throne, despite Edward the Confessor's wish that William Duke of Normandy should be his heir. Seeking retribution,...

This collection of poems includes the themes of domestic tension, law and order, submerged and exploding violence, and the anarchic strain in the human psyche. Simon Armitage is the author of Zoom!