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 Centre, the poem-film Out Of The Blue was commissioned by Channel 5 and broadcast five years after the 9.11 attacks on America. It won the 2006 Royal Television Society Documentary Award. 'We May Allow Ourselves A Brief Period Of Rejoicing' (a quote from one of Churchill's post-war speeches), was also commissioned by Channel 5, and broadcast on the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day. The radio-poem "Cambodia" was commissioned by the BBC for "The Violence of Silence", a radio drama set in today's Cambodia thirty years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

One of our most ingenious interpreters of Middle English, Oxford Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage is celebrated for his "compulsively readable" translations (New York Times Book Review). A perfect complement to his historic translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl reanimates another beloved Medieval English masterpiece thought to be by the same anonymous author and housed in the same original fourteenth-century manuscript. Honoring the rhythms and alliterative music of the original, Armitage's virtuosic translation describes a man mourning the loss of his Pearl-something that has "slipped away." What follows is a tense, fascinating, and tender dialogue weaving through the throes of grief toward divine redemption. Intricate and endlessly connected, Armitage's lyrical translation is a circular and perfected whole, much like the pearl itself.

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.

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, Armitage's reputation as one of the nation's most original, most respected and most influential poets seems secure. Paper Aeroplane: Poems 1989-2014 is the author's own choice of work from across a quarter-century of publishing. Drawing upon all of his award-winning poetry collections, including Kid, Book of Matches, The Universal Home Doctor, Seeing Stars and The Unaccompanied, as well as his medieval translations and verse dramas, Paper Aeroplane represents a generous and thrilling gathering of work from one of contemporary poetry's most essential voices.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY It 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. Prospect A graceful, elegant translation. Guardian Following 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.

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets and singing for his supper with poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. Walking Home describes his extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey of human endeavour, unexpected kindnesses and terrible blisters. The companion volume, Walking Away, is published in June 2015.

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.

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.

Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was rediscovered only 200 years ago, and published for the first time in 1839. One of the earliest great stories of English literature, after Beowulf, the poem narrates the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth... His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered - and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.

20 years after the Trojan war, the Gods have decided it is time for Odysseus to return to Ithaca, before his wife Penelope is forced to marry again. Angry Poseidon is seeking revenge for the murder of his son, and Odysseus has many perilous storms and treacherous landfalls ahead of him if he is to be reunited with Penelope.

Zoom! is the book which launched Simon Armitage's meteoric rise to poetic stardom. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award in 1989 and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. The e-book edition of Zoom! incorporates audio files for 18 of the poems using recordings Simon Armitage made for Peter Sansom in Huddersfield in 1989. So the voice you hear is that of Simon Armitage, then aged 26, when he was still working as a probation officer and had just published his first book of poems.

The poems collected in Tribute: Three Commemorative Poems were composed by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage for three significant royal occasions. 'The Patriarchs: An Elegy' was written after Prince Philip passed away in April 2021, 'Queenhood' celebrates the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in June 2022, while 'Floral Tribute' was composed upon her death, three months later. Gathered together and introduced by a short author's note, this majestic collector's edition presents a lasting tribute as we come to terms with the end of an era.

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 BAFTA-winning Feltham Sings, and other miscellaneous ventures. The volume's 'Intro' charts these projects and the blurred origins of ritualised language, while its 'Outro' offers contextualising notes and anecdotal insights. Never Good with Horses further demonstrates the rich range of Armitage's repertoire and celebrates his ear for the music of language, harnessed here for the page.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY It 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. Prospect A graceful, elegant translation. Guardian Following 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.

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature. Ted Hughes (1930-98) was born in Yorkshire. His first book, The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957. His last collection, Birthday Letters, was published in 1998 and won the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Forward Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1998.

This slim volume is the perfect introduction to the work of Simon Armitage for newcomers, or the ideal selection for longtime readers to keep on the bedside table.

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.

WINNER OF THE PEN AWARD FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION Pearl is an entrancing allegorical tale of grief and lost love, as the narrator is led on a Dantean journey through sorrow to redemption by his vanished beloved. Retaining all the alliterative music of the original, a Middle English poem thought to be by the same anonymous author responsible for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl is here brought to vivid and intricate life in the care of one of the finest poets writing today.

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.

One of the founding stories of English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight narrates the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse who rudely interrupts Camelot's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. The following Yuletide, Gawain dutifully sets forth. His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dreamlike castle, a dire challenge answered-and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing. Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, this Arthurian epic was rediscovered only two hundred years ago and published for the first time in 1839. Following in the tradition of Ted Hughes, Marie Borroff, and J.R.R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage-one of England's leading poets-has produced an inventive translation that resounds with both clarity and spirit. His work, presented here with facing original text and a note by Harvard scholar James Simpson, is meticulously responsible to the sophistication of the original but succeeds equally in its ambition to be read as a totally new poem. It is as if two poets, six hundred years apart, set out on a journey through the same mesmerizing landscapes-acoustic, physical, and metaphorical-to share in and double the pleasure of this enchanting classic.

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.

'The Best British Poetry 2014' presents the finest and most engaging poems found in literary magazines and webzines over the past year. The material gathered represents the rich variety of current UK poetry. Each poem is accompanied by a note by the poet explaining the inspiration for the poem.

In this new verse adaptation, originally commissioned for BBC radio, Simon Armitage has recast Homer's epic as a series of bristling dramatic dialogues: between gods and men; between no-nonsense Captain Odysseus and his unruly, lotus-eating, homesick companions; and between subtle Odysseus (wiliest hero of antiquity) and a range of shape-shifting adversaries Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, the Cyclops as he and his men are "pinballed between islands" of adversity. One of the most individual voices of his generation, Armitage revitalizes our sense of the Odyssey as oral poetry, as indeed one of the greatest of tall tales."