Selected Poems of Simon Armitage
By (Author) Simon Armitage
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
6th August 2001
Main
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
821.914
Paperback
176
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 14mm
209g
This selection provides a perfect introduction to Armitage's work as well as offering a timely retrospective of one of the brightest stars of contemporary poetry. Made by Simon Armitage himself from his poetry to date, Selected Poems includes work from six published volumes, from Zoom! (1989) through to the poem commissioned for the Millennium, Killing Time.
'Armitage creates a muscular but elegant language of his own out of slangy, youthful, up-to-the-minute jargon and the vernacular of his native northern England. He combines this with an easily worn erudition, plenty of nous and the benefit of unblinkered experience... to produce poems of moving originality.' Peter Reading, Sunday Times; 'Armitage writes with wit and feeling about experiences and conditions which poetry often turns its back on.' Jamie McKendrick, Independent; 'Of the fresh faces that have enlivened poetry over the last half-dozen years, none has loomed larger or fresher than that of Simon Armitage.' Mick Imlah, Vogue
Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield in 1963. After reading Geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic he went on to do a course in Social Work and Psychology at Manchester University. For a time he worked in Manchester as a Probation Officer.Simon Armitage's first book of poetry, Zoom! (Bloodaxe), was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. His second collection, Kid, was published by Faber in 1992 to instant and wide acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and Simon Armitage was voted 'Most Promising New Poet' for the Forward Poetry Prize. In 1993 he was the Sunday Times 'Young Writer of the Year'. His third collection, Book of Matches, was published in the Autumn of that year to great acclaim. In May 1994 he was selected as one of the twenty young poets included in the Poetry Society's high profile 'New Generation Poets' promotion.In September 1995 Faber published The Dead Sea Poem