{"id":3890,"date":"2019-05-12T17:23:42","date_gmt":"2019-05-12T17:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=3890"},"modified":"2019-05-27T13:39:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T13:39:53","slug":"simon-armitage-poet-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/simon-armitage-poet-laureate\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Laureate: an essay on Simon Armitage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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With this weekend’s announcement of Simon Armitage’s appointment as poet laureate, many of us have been reminiscing about when we first came across him in the late 80’s. My partner, Sue Dymoke<\/a>, did her first public reading with him in 1987 and our friend John Harvey<\/a> published him early on in the fine Nottingham-based poetry magazine Slow Dancer<\/em> (celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year – Sue was the UK poetry editor for many years). 29 years ago, enthused by Simon’s early work, I wrote an essay about him for Slow Dancer<\/em>. I wanted to give him a boost, but his career was moving so quickly, he’d already taken flight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over on Facebook, Andrew Moorhouse<\/a> asked me to dig out this first ever essay on Armitage and copy it for him. While I was it, I decided that I might as well OCR the text and put it online. I haven’t changed a word. The cover for the issue is above – a field mouse has chewed away the top corner (it was in our allotment garage and the mice like the taste of small press glue). Here’s my biog note from the back of the issue, which also featured an up and coming name, Billy Collins, and the late, great Tina Fulker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And here’s the essay. Congratulations, Simon. I’m sure you’ll do a good job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE POETRY OF SIMON ARMITAGE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to think that we\nonce wrote poetry<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

about the distance between\nstars, and how<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

for small things the\nskin on a surface<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of water is almost\nimpregnable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A Place to Love.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second half of the eighties has seen a new generation of\nsmall press magazines invent itself: The Wide Skirt, The Echo Room , The North\nand (the late) Harry\u2019s Hand, presenting a distinctly new group of poets. They\u2019re\n25-35, mostly male, and mostly live within ten miles of Huddersfield. They go\nto Peter Sansom\u2019s poetry workshops and none vote Tory,  or get  published in magazines run by the London Litcrit\nmafia. Instead, they’ve set up their own alternative version (with, of course,\nthe generous assistance of Yorkshire Arts).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a lot of hard work and rather more poetic talent\nthan Faber and Faber have dug out in the last decade or two, none of the\nHuddersfield Mafia have managed to make any kind of national impact. Until now.\nSimon Armitage, at 26, the youngest of these new Northern poets, has just\npublished his first collection (Zoom! Bloodaxe. \u00a34.95). Despite not being feted\nin any of the publications that Blake Morrison’s friends get reviewed in, Zoom!\nwas the PBS Autumn choice and even got shortlisted for the Whitbread. This kind\nof success is not so much rare as unheard of. Simon also won a major Gregory\naward in 1988, appeared last year on radios 3 and 4. If he keeps going at this\nrate, he should get a South Bank Show special while the 90s are still young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes Simon\u2019s evident success surprising isn\u2019t his age\nor origins (born in Huddersfield, returned there after university), but that\nhis style is so uncompromisingly original (unlike, say, Wendy Cope, the\nbest-selling new poet of the 80\u2019s). Which doesn\u2019t mean inaccessible:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can half hear you,\nJohn, half see you fumble<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

with a car battery, a\ntwo two air rifle<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

two wires and a\nheadlamp. You and that shivering dog<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

going as two\nsilhouettes above Warrington.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His style is conversational. Cars appear in a lot of the\npoems. There\u2019s always a sense of humour somewhere near the surface, but it\u2019s\nhard to pin down: equal measures  of\nirony and compassion are directed at his quirky subjects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the poetry in \u2018Zoom!\u2019 could have been written by\nanyone else. What makes the voice so distinct is best summed up in his own\nwords: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s often a narrative\nor yarn, a build up of images and links pebbledashed with a mix of idiom, slang\nand cliche… although real life is the main ingredient of these poems, they\nare seasoned with a generous pinch of verisimilitude.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PBS Bulletin, Autumn 1989<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some influences are apparent: like many of the new Northern\npoets he\u2019s more in tune with the relaxed rhythms and wide ranging subject\nmatter of post-war U.S. poets than their drier, more formal English\ncounterparts. Frank O’Hara gets a namecheck and William Carlos Williams is\nhanging around somewhere. [an McMillan\u2019s quirky surrealism might be a more\nlocal inspiration. Like MacMillan, Armitage\u2019s poems work as well, or better,\nwhen read aloud. They share a love for the memorable punchline: \u2018no fish: no\nbirds: no shit.\u2019 (\u2018The Peruvian Anchovy Industry\u2019.) Or \u2018My cock\u2019s a kipper\u2019 (\u2018Bus\nTalk\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armitage also acknowledges influences from rock: it\u2019s easy\nto identify the tone of David Byrne\u2019s (Talking Heads) deadpan lyrics about\nUrban American life in aspects of Simon\u2019s style. Don\u2019t Sing\u2019 uses the title of\nPaddy McAloon\u2019s meditation on Graham Greene (recorded by Prefab Sprout) to tell\nan absurd yet poignant war story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith Doorstop published \u2018Human Geography\u2019 in 1986. It\nincludes \u2018Lamping\u2019, quoted above, amongst other equally distinctive poems and\nseveral with a rawer approach. By the time it was reprinted two years later, the\nfalse starts had been cut \u2014 only seven of the original seventeen remain. Some\nof the cut poems are good, but one gets the sense that Armitage is prolific and\nhas plenty to choose from. Youth isn\u2019t far behind in these poems. \u2018Dykes\u2019,\ndespite its predictable puns, somehow links dams with maybe lesbians in wry,\nrevealing couplets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later I discovered<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was only pointing\nto an overflow culvert.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although we were\nclose, she knew a closer, deeper circle <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which, at seventeen, I\nfound undetectable<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And many of her\nstories held no water<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially those\ninvolving Susan, Gill or Sandra<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The Distance Between Stars\u2019, which Wide Skirt published the\nfollowing year, is the best of Simon\u2019s three pamphlets. His style has fully\narrived. Bookended with poems on astronomical themes, \u2018The Distance…\u2019 moves from\nthe mysterious to the mundane, leaving you never quite sure which is which. Many\npoems take the form of monologues. These are closer to Alan Bennett’s Talking\nHeads than to Carol Ann Duffy\u2019s Thrown Voices and range from the bleak, bitter\nAntarctic narrative \u201cBylot Island\u2019 to the jokey, condescending mechanic in \u2018Very\nSimply Topping Up the Brake Fluid\u2019. The latter poem manages to convey the\nbroken rhythms of a continuously interrupted monologue, while reading with\nverve and a rhythmic swing which may be as difficult to write as It is easy to\nread:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026gently does it, that\u2019s\nit. Try not to spill it, it\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

corrosive: rusts, you know,\nand fill it till it\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

level with the notch\non the clutch reservoir.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lovely.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the fact that these poems are accessible doesn\u2019t mean\nthat they\u2019re light. Armitage carries emotion confidently, unafraid to confront\nsentiment. \u2018Gone\u2019 reminds me of Larkin\u2019s \u2018Home is so sad\u2019,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the bed, empty,\nthat\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

one thing. But her\nwatch, still ticking<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and the loop of one, blonde\nhair<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

caught in her\nhairbrush. Ihat\u2019s another.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ability to let a detail stand starkly in representation\nof death; the stern laconic phrase which conveys intense emotion: these are the\nwork of a mature, and possibly major poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armitage\u2019s last pamphlet was \u2018The Walking Horses (Slow\nDancer 1988) which is a consistent, but more varied set than \u2018..Stars\u2019. Its\nmajor poems are his longest monologue so far, \u201cAll Beer and Skittles\u2019 , a\ncynically comic account of the sacking of a sometime plumber, and \u2018Screenplay\u2019,\na more speculative, tender, visual poem that could not have been written by\nmany of his peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, there are qualities that he shares with other new\nNorthern poets: humour, arrogance, awkward sensitivity laced with a generous\nmeasure of self doubt, also, a sometimes fussy referential habit (whether to\nplaces or people} – Armitage takes all these, but transcends them, making\nsomething more original. This was overwhelming apparent later in 1988, when a revised,\nextended edition of his first book introduced many of the remaining poems to be\nfound in \u2018Zoom!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        The bears in Yosemite Park<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

are swaggering home,\nlegged up with fishing line<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 and polythene and above the grind of his\nskidoo<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

a ranger curses the\npolitics of skinny dipping.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armitage avoids fixed rhythms, attaining a conversational\nshamble of deceptive pace: walking a kind of metrical highwire. His poems can\nbe read many times and retain their freshness. I recall the excitement of reading\n\u2018Zoom\u2019 for the first time, in issue four of \u2018The North\u2019: (The exclamation mark,\nincidentally, was added later, evidently at Bloodaxe\u2019s insistence) the boldness\nof the metaphor could have been overbearingly arrogant in almost anyone else\u2019s\nhands, yet it works as a magical, comic, surreal, and finally quite humble\naccount of the creative process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book \u2018Zoom!\u2019 (Bloodaxe, 4.95) is a fat first volume\nwhich is worth buying even if you’ve got all the pamphlets discussed above, and\nindispensable if you haven\u2019t. Many of the newest poems seem grittier, more\ncompassionate than his earlier work. His probation worker job may partly account\nfor this, emerging as subject matter in poems like \u2018Social Inquiry Report\u2019,\n\u2018Eighties, Nineties\u2019 and \u2018The Stuff\u2019. But then some of the final poems in the\ncollection are even harder to classify than any of those I\u2019ve tried to discuss\nearlier: more wilfully obscure and cynical, yet wistful in tone. And among\nthem, reminding us of his background in Oceanography, is one of the most\nstriking poems about ecology that I’ve read, \u2018Remembering the East Coast\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At conference<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

how they roared at the\nchairman’s address,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

his much told fable<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the bald patents\nclerk<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

who resigned his post\ncirca 1850<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

explaining \u2018Everything\nwe need<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

is now invented.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But alone I am with\nhim; dipping the quill,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

crossing the t of his\nsignature,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

blotting the I\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of his oddball\nopinion. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Zoom!\u2019 is only a beginning, but a dazzling one, from a poet\nwho\u2019s already past words like \u2018promise\u2019 and \u2018potential . Finally, it leaves you\nwith the same impulses as all good art: it leaves you wanting more and it keeps\nyou guessing. Give Simon Armitage a test drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Slow Dancer issue 23, 1990. Copyright David Belbin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With this weekend’s announcement of Simon Armitage’s appointment as poet laureate, many of us have been reminiscing about when we first came across him in the late 80’s. My partner, Sue Dymoke, did her first public reading with him in 1987 and our friend John Harvey published him early on in the fine Nottingham-based poetry magazine Slow Dancer (celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year – Sue was the UK poetry editor for many years). 29 years ago, enthused by Simon’s early work, I wrote an essay about him for Slow Dancer. I wanted to give him a boost, but his career was moving so quickly, he’d already taken flight. Over on Facebook, Andrew Moorhouse asked me to dig out this first ever essay on Armitage and copy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3890"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3944,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3890\/revisions\/3944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}