The Unaccompanied - Hardcover

Armitage, Simon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571333842 ISBN 13: 9780571333844

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2017

Synopsis

'The most popular English poet since Larkin.' Sunday Times

After 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

About this title

About the Author

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, he has published eleven collections of poetry, including Seeing Stars, Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989 – 2014, and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Shout: Selected Poems, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and his translation of the medieval poem Pearl received the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He writes extensively for radio and television, has published three best-selling non-fiction titles, and his theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. He has taught at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and in 2015 was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Last Snowman
He drifted south

down an Arctic seaway

on a plinth of ice, jelly tots

weeping lime green tears

around both eyes,

a carrot for a nose

(some reported parsnip),

below which a clay pipe

drooped from a mouth

that was pure stroke victim.

A red woolen scarf trailed

in the meltwater drool

at his base, and he slumped

to starboard, kinked,

gone at the pelvis.

From the buffet deck

of a passing cruise liner

stag and hen parties shied

Scotch eggs and Pink Ladies

as he rounded the stern.

He sailed on between banks

of rubberneckers

and camera lenses

into a bloodshot west,

past islands vigorous

with sunflower and bog myrtle,

singular and abominable.
The Present


I shove up through the old plantation—larch

out of season, drab, drained of all greenness,

widowed princesses in moth-eaten furs—

and stride out onto the lap of the moor.

Rotten and rusted, a five-bar gate

lies felled in the mud, letting the fields escape.

Winter is late and light this year, thin snow

half puddled, sun still trapped in the earth,

sludge underfoot all the way to the ridge.

And no sign of the things I came here to find,

except in a high nick at the valley head

where a wet north-facing lintel of rock

has cornered and cupped enough of the wind

for dripping water to freeze. Icicles:

once, I unrooted some six-foot tusk

from the waterfall’s crystalized overhang,

lowered it down and stood it on end, then stared

at an ice age locked in its glassy depths,

at far hills bottled in its weird lens.

These are brittle and timid and rare, and weep

in my gloved fist as I ferry them home.

I’d wanted to offer my daughter

a taste of the glacier, a sense of the world

being pinned in place by a diamond-like cold

at each pole, but I open my hand

and there’s nothing to pass on, nothing to hold.
Nurse at a Bus Stop
The slow traffic takes a good long look.

Jilted bride of public transport,

alone in the shelter,

the fireproof bin and shatterproof glass

scrawled with the cave art of cocks and hearts.

It’s late, Friday, the graveyard shift, you’re ready

to dab blood from a split lip,

to hold the hand of cancer till the line goes flat.

Cardigan, sensible shoes, the kids

with a neighbor, fob watch pinned

like a medal to your breast.

Winter sharpens the day.

The centuries crawl past,

none of them going your way.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571333842
• ISBN 13: 9780571333844
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 88