“The power of language has never gone away for me. I am constantly reminded of just what an incredible tool language is; the greatest invention by humans”
Like blossom on urban streets, poet laureate Simon Armitage believes that verse can bring beauty to unexpected places – and he’s on a mission to share it with as many as possible
At 15, I wasn’t interested in anything. Just sport really. Then we started reading Ted Hughes in school and I was bowled over by these little packages of language. Only black marks against a white background, but put in the right order, they make astonishing things happen in your head.” Simon Armitage is in his garret of a study, surrounded by books, “and about 200 boxes of pens” that he’s accidentally hoarded over the years. You’d expect nothing less of a Poet Laureate, but he came to poetry via an unexpected route. Born in Marsden in West Yorkshire, poetry was rebellion for the teenaged Armitage.
“I thought of poems as subversive, secretive,” he explains. “Something I could enjoy without having to talk to anybody else about it. As quite a furtive teenager that was very appealing.”
After studying Geography at Portsmouth, and then a Master’s in Manchester, he worked for eight years as a probation officer, years which he has often said were difficult ones and which left him with rather a bleak outlook. He escaped that career to make a go of it as a poet and has since published more than 20 collections of poetry, as well as plays, travel novels, songs and more. “I’m not much cop at anything else,” he shrugs. “I found my forte in writing poetry.” But it’s clear his years in probation work remained with him in an ability to talk to and about ‘ordinary people’. “I don’t want to be a poet who’s sitting in an office, writing, but spending less and less time in the world, experiencing all its bumps and knocks and coincidences. I think poetry belongs to everybody.”
POEMS FOR THE PEOPLE
Bringing poetry to everyday folk is what Simon set out to do in writing Walking Home, in 2010. He walked the 256 miles of the Pennine Way, from North to South, as a troubadour, walking up to 20 miles each day and then performing each night to fund the next leg. “I love walking and where I live [the Holme Valley in West Yorkshire] the scenery is epic. The rhythm of walking and your slightly raised heartbeat are in tune with poetic rhythms. And it’s an activity where the ‘film’ up ahead of you is changing all the time; you can never anticipate what’s around the next corner.”
Certainly, the folk around the next corner might not have anticipated seeing one of the nation’s best loved poets standing in their boozer. “I wanted to prove that everybody has a right to poetry, to show them it was worthy of a wet night out in Wensleydale on a Wednesday,” he says, with easy alliteration. This aspect of bringing poetry to the people is very much part and parcel of poetry for him. “Part of the folk tradition is that the diction is that of the spoken word.” Having published translations and dramatisations of
many works in the oral tradition, including Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Pearl and The Odyssey, Armitage is well used to bringing folk into the 21st century and bringing poetry ‘to the folk’, too.
FINDING A FOOTHOLD
This idea of breaking down barriers is also at the centre of his new project with the National Trust, the publication of Blossomise, a collection of poems and haikus which explores themes around the fleeting beauty of blossom. Simon explains that they hope to create a National Blossom Day similar to the Hanami festivals in Japan, maybe using the poems as a wassailing ceremony, bringing people out to serenade the trees – perhaps enticing those who might not have felt that was something for them. “Poetry was once a gate-kept activity, but now it’s more inclined towards new and different voices. In years gone by, nature was also the preserve of people with a certain cultural background, but recently people of more diverse backgrounds have been encouraged to get involved,” says Simon. “A lot of planting done by the National »
“Poet Laureate is a role with history and status and tradition, so it’s an opportunity to make things happen”
Trust is in urban or deprived areas. Nature can find a foothold in unlikely places – the tiniest crack in a brick wall or in railway sidings.”
This ambition to bring poetry to unexpected places might seem at odds with the lofty job of Poet Laureate, a ten-year tenure Armitage holds until 2029, but he thinks otherwise. “It’s a role with history and status and tradition, so it’s an opportunity to make things happen.” He’s already launched an environmental poetry prize (the Laurel Prize), does a tour of libraries every spring to champion what he calls “a beleaguered but essential service”. And he is currently developing a National Poetry Centre in Leeds.
With his writing, too, he’s not exactly been idle. “I was made Laureate in May 2019. Lockdown started in spring the following year, and it felt like there was a Laureate-shaped hole there so I wrote a poem called ‘Lockdown’. It was pointed out to me at the time I became Laureate that there might be some ‘big events’ on the horizon,” he says wryly. “I don’t think they quite realised what some of them might be… But obviously there was the death of Prince Phillip and the Queen and then the coronation. Writing earnestly about people you don’t really know can be difficult.”
POETRY IN THE EVERYDAY
So where do you start when you sit down to pen a poem about the longest-serving British monarch,
“Everybody has a right to poetry – I wanted to show it was worthy of a wet Wednesday night out in Wensleydale”
or a pandemic, or a blossom tree? “I’m not fussy about where I write. I’m very happy sitting in a café or on a train with people. I don’t mind if there’s something going on just ‘offstage’, where you can tune in and tune out. I think it helps, even if it’s only a few seconds, going away and coming back, that opportunity of reappraisal before you redraft.”
He makes it all sound so easy. But what about the rest of us? Can anyone write poetry? He smiles mischievously, “I always say to students” (he is currently Professor of Poetry at Leeds University) “that there are only three things you need to know about writing poetry… and nobody knows what they are. Actually,” he adds more seriously, “I think that you can’t be a writer unless you’re a reader. You might spend your whole life creating something only to find out Wordsworth did it.”
So, if daffodils did it for Wordsworth, what are the ‘simple things’ that inspire Simon? “I think all the things in life that are important to me are pretty simple, actually,” he says. “Vinyl albums are one. There’s a nostalgia to them – I like things that are
analogue. I’m a terrible collector of pens, too,” he admits. Hence the massive, stolen collection in his attic. “Everywhere I go I think ‘that looks like a really nice pen’ and I’ll pick it up. There’s a great beauty in the simple Biro,” he muses. He’s finding his form now, and remembering more and more simple things he loves. “When I went on Desert Island Discs my luxury item was a tennis ball, just to throw and catch. That’s a simple thing, right?”
The cogs are still turning, though. “I’ve thought of another simple thing,” he grins. “A cheese sandwich... No wait – I’m going to go with bread and butter. It’s my favourite meal.” His enthusiasm for listing all his best things is endearing. Just how a poet should be; finding joy in the everyday. After all, without simple pleasures, Wordsworth would have had no ‘Daffodils’ fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
“I say to students there are only three things to know about writing poetry… and nobody knows what they are”