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A quick anaysis for every poem in the OCR Reflections Anthology by Simon Armitage

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Posted by Joanna on June 25, 2012 in OCR English GCSE | ∞

Lots of people have asked me for analysis of Simon Armitage's poems in the OCR anthology, Reflections. As I haven't had time to write up full analysis for each poem yet, I'm putting these brief revision notes up instead for the time being. See the bottom of the post for links to other sites that will help with these poems too.
Click here for a PDF of Simon Armitage Poetry Analysis Revision Grid About His Person What happens?
Police (?) go through the objects that have been found on a man's dead body.

How we try to understand someone or think we know a person by just looking at them / making assumptions or guesses

How difficult it is to know someone or figure them out; ppl are complex & often unknowable to an extent

Alaska What happens?

A man imagines talking to his ex-girlfriend (?) about how he feels now their relationship is over

It seems she left him and now she is with someone else nearby

1st person narrative voice / dramatic monologue & use of 2nd person direct address ('Girl')

Tone: angry, conversational ('Big deal!')

Similes ('like...kodiak bear / crown prince / nodding donkeys)'

Natural imagery ('Alaska'; 'bear'; 'rainy'; 'Bering Strait')

The difficulties of romantic relationships

The emotions experienced when a relationship breaks up

Trying to pin blame after a relationship break-up

Gooseberry Season What happens?

A man stayed at the narrator's house. He was ungrateful & did not try to get a job but just let the family look after him. The narrator eventually got tired of this and drowns him, dumping his body with his son.

Murder

Ability of people to act in contradictory ways

When does the punishment fit the crime?

Hitcher What happens?

A man gets an irate message from boss, hitchhikes to a hire car, then drives.

He picks up another hitchhiker & violently murders him

In Our Tenth Year What happens?

The narrator speaks to his partner (?) about the ten years of their relationship

He gives her a flower to hold and then tells her to let go of it

1st person ('the way we were')

Tone: thoughtful, reminiscing, regretful, hopeful, philosophical

Gentle, soft language / sibilance ('harebell'; 'fuss of such and such')

Kid What happens?

A son imagines talking to his father about how he now feels differently about their relationship

1st person, dramatic monologue & 2nd person direct address ('Batman'; 'you baby')

Tone: angry, bitter, confident, sarcastic ('makes a marvellous picture')

Metaphor: 'Batman'

Language from comic strip contrasts serious tone ('Holy roll-me-over...')

One stanza only; half rhymes (ending '-er')

Mice and Snakes... What happens?

The speaker talks about how he was brought up by his father in a positive way.

He says they got on well and never fought, but then gives examples of some times when they did

He agrees with his father that if he ever finally realised he should fight back more against his father, by that time his dad would probably be too old and the speaker would feel too bad fighting him

Parent-child / father-son relationships

Violence in families

Can we believe the speaker? ('aside / from the odd time...) (was it the 'odd' time; was his dad really that nice?)

Everyone has good and bad sides / people may be different to how they appear

you can't escape your parents' influence on you

acceptance of others faults and moving on (but is this the case or is the speaker in denial - 'decent...upbringing'?)

Mother any distance... What happens?

A mother helps her child move into his/her new home
My father thought it... What happens?

A father criticises his child for getting his ear pierced

When the son is 29 he finds himself criticising others in the same way

Parent-child / father-son relationships

People become like their parents / you can't escape your parents' influence on you

Peer pressure / being a teenager

Poem What happens?

The narrator looks back and recounts the good and bad things a man did

Tone: light-hearted with serious undertone; somewhat detached

Anaphora / repetition ('And')

Sonnet form but not regular full rhymes

The Convergence of the Twain What happens?

The narrator describes: the scene (Ground Zero) after the collapse of the Twin Towers; the time before & leading up to 9/11; the moment of the collision

How to make sense of an event like 9-11

Tensions between the West & Middle East and how we should view these / talk about them

Modern-day technology / capitalism ('half-excoriated Apple Mac')

Neutral moral tone? ('a force')

Linked to Hardy's poem of same name about titanic hitting iceberg; emphasizes man as materialistic vs. beauty & power of nature

To Poverty What happens?

The narrator talks to a person / silhouette and says he has tried to get rid of them for ages, but hasn't been able to.

By the end the narrator decides that actually he'd rather have the person nearby so that he can 'keep an eye' on them

Poverty

Living without enough money

True North What happens?

The narrator recounts when he came back from college one Christmas and went to the pub.

1st person narrative voice

Tone: reflective, anticipatory

Ambiguity: 'true north' = geographically south, therefore Falklands islands?

Natural imagery & metaphors: 'snow-storm'; 'wolves'

Wintering Out What happens?

The narrator talks to his girlfriend about living at her parents' house while they wait to move out in the summer.

Romantic relationships

Having to hold back emotions / not be yourself

Without Photographs What happens?

The narrator recalls a memory of times when he/she went with friends and set up a large fire in an old mill.

They melt metal pieces together.

Links
You should definitely watch the podcasts posted by 'federationenglish' on You Tube. They have posted several really helpful audio tracks that are clear and strike just the right note, avoiding being patronising or too difficult. I have only put a link to the first audio track for each poem they have done (About His Person, Alaska, Gooseberry Season, Hitcher, In Our Tenth Year, Mice and Snakes, Mother Any Distance, My Father Thought It, Poem, Convergence), but there are usually several separate podcasts they have done for each poem. You should be able to find the subsequent parts to each poem analysis yourself.
About His Person Podcast Part 1 Alaska Podcast Part 1 Gooseberry Season Podcast Part 1 Hitcher Podcast Part 1 In Our Tenth Year Podcast Part 1 Kid Podcast Podcast Part 1 Mice and Snakes Podcast Part 1 Mother Any Distance Podcast Part 1 My Father Thought It Podcast Part 1 Poem Podcast Part 1 Convergence Podcast Part 1

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OCR Armitage Analysis 'Alaska' & Others - Lost in words, English tuition

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Posted by Joanna on June 25, 2012 in OCR English GCSE | ∞ Lots of people have asked me for analysis of Simon Armitage's poems in the OCR anthology, Reflections. As I haven't had time to write up full analysis for each poem yet, I'm putting these brief revision notes up instead for the time being.

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http://prezi.com/g9eqh_ykybap/simon-armitage-poem/

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http://prezi.com/9hr5z6knp1t-/true-north-by-simon-armitage/

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http://prezi.com/5k5ede9lz17l/kid-by-simon-armitage/

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The official Simon Armitage website with poems and a biography

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Simon Armitage: 'poetry is a form of dissent'

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This is a funny/strange clip of Armitage reading a poem.. I'm not sure if he's being arty or boring..

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"I ask people to put in what they think I am worth," he says, adding drily: "Sometimes that has not been money." Among the "gifts" have been a dental appointment card and a slip of paper with a phone number on it, saying "Brenda - call me!"

The poet's gloomy disposition suggests that he and Brenda did not hook up for a night of bliss, but then Armitage is both happily married and deliciously dour. So much so that one critic declared him to be the Eeyore of Walking, after reading his account of a previous adventure along the Pennine Way.

Walking Home ends in lovingly-described misery and failure only a few miles from the village in West Yorkshire where he was raised and still lives, with his wife and teenage daughter.

It also includes an encounter with "a little old man" on a fell who says he bumped into the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney only a week before. Armitage fears "walking into the Old Nag's Head in Edale in a couple of days' time only to find Heaney sitting at the bar, having already got there first, Amundsen to my Scott, the story already told, the book already written."

The older poet has been an inspiration to him all his life, and a close friend in recent years, but there is a sadness to the story now. Heaney died last week, and Armitage only found out about it when a reporter from BBC News managed to get through to his mobile as he was walking from Porlock Weir to Lynton.

"I didn't know," he says. "Then my phone was just going bananas. I was very upset about it. I switched the phone off. I felt quite lonely about all that."

They were a generation apart, but still close. "I knew him well," he says. "We did a reading together a few months ago in London. That was probably the last time I saw him. He'd had a stroke six or seven years ago: it wasn't a secret, he had written about it, so physically he was frailer than he had been before that, but absolutely just as sharp."

He feels bereft, in the way he last did when Ted Hughes died. "They were like the last big beasts of poetry, the Magi. People whose spells you could fall under. They were of that school, that generation. When Seamus died, I texted another poet that I know and I said, 'We're on our own now.' We've lost a chieftain."

When Armitage was a young lad growing up in Marsden, finding a rebel song in poetry, Heaney was already a master. "He was just part of the landscape. Now he's gone. It is like you get up one day and somebody has taken one of the mountains away."

It was Heaney who convinced him that poetry was not just about the words on the page. "His character and personality, the way he was with people, his presence at the readings, and his voice, it all fed in to the totality of his poetry."

He looks a little lost for a moment, still raw at the loss. "My wife came down and walked with me for a day, partly because we were both so upset about Seamus and wanted to spend some time together, but I won't see her again until the end now," he says. "That seems a long way off."

He sounds like an Arctic explorer, but we are actually just sharing a pot of tea at the Beach Cafe in Westward Ho! - a Victorian resort named after a novel and built to capitalise on its success. The walk he has finished is the sort of thing ramblers do on their holidays, although only the more dedicated would follow the path for 250 miles over three weeks.

Armitage has also deliberately created a situation that makes him feel vulnerable. Rather than sink into a bath at a nice hotel somewhere, alone, he has to be social with new hosts and then haul his weary body into an upright position to entertain an audience with nothing but his own words. Every night. He's feeling it. "Although I got lost in the Pennines sometimes, I did feel at home. I don't here. I feel like a stranger."

The walk began in Minehead, where he stayed in a chalet at Butlin's, so what did the punters there make of his poetry? "I didn't do a reading there. I chickened out. I just couldn't compete with A Tribute To Olly Murs."

His favourite reading so far has been in a Baptist chapel converted into a home. "It was so quiet and there was a slight sense of it being a sermon. It had these lovely old chapel windows, the sun was going down outside and the people of the village had gathered. I felt very relaxed there. That might have been to do with the fact that I sat down while I was reading ..."

He is dosed up with painkillers for a bad back. "I've got a wonky spine, and even a couple of months ago I was thinking I couldn't do this, but so far I'm holding up, just tweaks and pulls and twinges. I'm quite hot. I've got a blister on my left toe," he says. "My boot split the other day. I mended it with a bit of Araldite. You couldn't be surprised by the lack of cobblers in Braunton."

Soon he is whisked away for a shower and a shave at the home of tonight's hosts, Oliver and Fiona Chope, owners of Walter Henry's Bookshop in Bideford. They saw an appeal in the local paper for people to organise readings along the route.

"We never thought we would get him, because we knew the school and the library would want him," says Mrs Chope. "We don't often get big names in Bideford."

By 8pm, the little bookshop is full of 40 or so people. Armitage appears rested and clean-shaven, wearing fresh jeans and a shirt that someone has ferried in a suitcase from the previous stop. Is that cheating? What about the credit card he keeps in a hidden pocket, only to be used in absolute emergency? Armitage compares himself to a medieval troubadour, but they did not have personal websites on which to appeal in advance for help. Then there is the fame. He is one of the few poets who get recognised in the street, or by their voice.

Simon Armitage is also the sort of writer who gets big public commissions, such as the poems he wrote to be carved into stones along the Pennine Way. He won't talk about the money, but does admit to earning "more than I would have done in my old job as a probation officer".

He is also required reading for students of English in schools, which he mentions during the night's performance. "I get people coming up to me all the time, saying, 'I read your poems at school.' I always wonder if they are bearing a grudge."

Cue titters. Then come murmurs of appreciation during his wonderful, hypnotic poem You're Beautiful. Earlier in the day, he said poetry was "an art form that goes back to the campfire". Here in the bookshop, there are clearly still people who enjoy the magic of storytelling, and concentrated moments created from carefully chosen words.

Between poems, he keeps the banter light. Somebody asks what has caught the poet's eye on his walk through the north Devon landscape, and he smiles. "The ice cream van at Appledore waylaid me, momentarily."

Then he ends with a poignant poem capturing the middle-aged feeling that time is running out. (The sort of feeling that might compel a successful poet to risk his dignity like this.) The boy who goes out to play at the start of Evening comes back to the same house a man, finding his wife mending and his child sleeping. "You're sorry. You thought / It was early. How did it get so late?"

The applause that follows is warm, but how much is it worth? "Keeping the money a secret until I'm done," says Armitage in a text the next morning, well on his way to the next town. He is happy enough, though, to send a list of other things found at the bottom of the sock.

This, then, is what the people of Bideford gave to express their gratitude for an evening with one of the great British poets of our age, as encouragement for Simon Armitage on his journey: "Five McDonald's vouchers, a Campaign for Real Ale membership form, a handwritten letter about obscure goalkeepers, and a plastic badger."

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Simon Armitage: You wake up and somebody has taken one of the mountains away

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"I ask people to put in what they think I am worth," he says, adding drily: "Sometimes that has not been money." Among the "gifts" have been a dental appointment card and a slip of paper with a phone number on it, saying "Brenda - call me!"

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This is clips of simon armitage talking about his poems and analysing them

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Simon Armitage goes behind the scenes of some of his most famous poems.

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found a website that explains some of his life and poetry and where a lot of the influence for his poems comes from

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Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire, England in 1963. He earned a BA from Portsmouth University in geography, and an MS in social work from Manchester University, where he studied the impact of televised violence on young offenders. He worked as a probation officer for six years before focusing on poetry.

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Some AQA stuff on Simon Armitage's life. It was taking too long to see if someone had already put this up, so hopefully no one has!

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Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in the village of Marsden, West Yorkshire, and has lived for most of his life in the surrounding area. His grandparents also lived in Marsden and his sister and her family lived nearby. He studied Geography at Portsmouth University, returning to his parents' home after graduating.

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I found an article about a Poetic Pilgrimage that he went on. It also has one of the creepiest adds i've seen in a long time.

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After walking the Pennine Waya couple of summers ago I swore I'd never do it again, and I haven't changed my mind. It was a 21-day slog across saturated uplands, most of it in a blur of lead-coloured mist. As a poet, I expect to spend a certain amount of time with my head in the clouds, but after three weeks stumbling around inside them I have to report that the metaphorical and the literal experience are two very different things. Every night I gave readings in pubs, chapels, village halls or front rooms, and passed a sock round asking people to put in what they thought I was worth. I wrote a day-by-day account of the journey in Walking Home, and even though I arrived back in West Yorkshire physically depleted and mentally disturbed, I felt my reputation as a poet had been validated. More to the point, I felt optimistic and more enthusiastic than ever about my chosen art form, concluding that if an audience would turn out for a reading on a wet Wednesday in Wensleydale, then there is still a place for poetry in the hearts and minds of the British public. At the same time, I was happy to concede that it was hardly a rigorous anthropological survey, not least because the north tends to be home ground for me, something of a safe bet. And once I'd dried out, I started to wonder about making another journey as an itinerant but this time in unfamiliar territory and terrain.

After consulting a map of National Trails and other long-distance footpaths in the UK, I decided those criteria were best met by the outward section of the South West Coast Path. By a bizarre coincidence, at 256 miles it also happens to be the same length as the Pennine Way. So, in late August of this year, I intend to leave Minehead and, blisters permitting, arrive at the toe-end end of Britain's outstretched leg in mid-September. Some preliminary research about the point of departure (typing the word Minehead into Google) threw up the Butlins website, and as well as being surprised that the holiday camp still exists, I was amazed to find myself navigating through photographs of stylish apartments and funky-looking restaurants rather than black-and-white images of the leisure gulags of old. How better to begin a test of poetic value through the touristy south-west than by pitting myself against professional singers, seasoned comics and recognised performers on the entertainment circuit? Single-room supplement aside, how about it, Butlins?

A "moderate pace" - according to the guidebooks - means about 13 miles a day, so very quickly I'll be into Coleridge country, hoping not to experience too much of the poetic interruptus associated with Porlock, and passing along the northern fringe of Exmoor national park. Apart from odd visits to resort towns, I don't know the coast of Somerset or North Devon at all, and I have no idea if there are local bylaws restricting the free movement of practising poets along the shoreline. As the peninsula narrows, I'm hoping to find gainful employment on the south coast of Cornwall as well the north, maybe in Falmouth or Fowey. Does the Minack theatre, that staggering amphitheatre hewn from the cliffs near Porthcurno, need a one-off poetry reading as part of its summer schedule? And I hope to be invited into the Cornish interior as well, to its homes and halls, because I know from experience, and socioeconomic indicators, that the inland communities and the seaside towns of that county are two very different worlds. For the most part, though, and in vivid contrast to the Pennines, this journey will be at sea-level, and with the sea as a permanent companion. A journey of tidal rhythms, of more exotic natural history, changing accents and even a separate language. I can't imagine getting lost in the way I did in the Cheviots or on Cross Fell, but I also know from a literary hike from St Ives (Virginia Woolf) to Gurnard's Head (WS Graham via DH Lawrence) that the constant descending and ascending of gullies and cloughs is hard on the calves and thighs. And from trying and failing to ford the deceptively deep and swift-running Hayle estuary, I know that occasionally three miles have to be walked to travel one.

Land's End amusement park sounds like a hell hole so I'm not planning to hang around there, but instead to overshoot the mainland and arrive by ferry in the Isles of Scilly at around the time of a full moon; not for romantic purposes, but for reasons associated with planetary gravitational forces. Because, at certain times in the lunar cycle it is possible to carry on walking between some of the islands, from Tresco to Bryher, then Bryher to Samson, whose population, according to the 2001 census, is "(1)". I only hope that person likes contemporary verse.

I put an itinerary up on my website about six weeks ago and I've already had offers of readings and B&Bs at about half the stops. Nothing yet, though, for Lynton or Lynmouth or long tracts of the Devon coast. I've dangled a carrot in front of the Eden Project, but to only a muted response. I've also been experimenting with a protractor and a pencil, and plotting a course to British territories even further afield. The last time I heard, the people of the Falkland Islands were still hungover from celebrating the results of a referendum on sovereignty, but curiosity, or perhaps even masochism, compels me to wonder how many of its 2,841 citizens would be interested in a poetry reading, especially if I promise not to read that one with the word Malvinas in it? The art of walking on water is something I am yet to perfect, but if there is an offer of a seat on a direct flight from St Mary's airport in the Isles of Scilly to Stanley in the South Atlantic, to be paid for with a poem, then please get in touch.
Topics

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Simon Armitage: a poetic pilgrimage around Devon and Cornwall

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After walking the Pennine Waya couple of summers ago I swore I'd never do it again, and I haven't changed my mind. It was a 21-day slog across saturated uplands, most of it in a blur of lead-coloured mist.

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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/29/simon-armitage-poetry-walk-cornwall

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After walking the Pennine Waya couple of summers ago I swore I'd never do it again, and I haven't changed my mind. It was a 21-day slog across saturated uplands, most of it in a blur of lead-coloured mist. As a poet, I expect to spend a certain amount of time with my head in the clouds, but after three weeks stumbling around inside them I have to report that the metaphorical and the literal experience are two very different things. Every night I gave readings in pubs, chapels, village halls or front rooms, and passed a sock round asking people to put in what they thought I was worth. I wrote a day-by-day account of the journey in Walking Home, and even though I arrived back in West Yorkshire physically depleted and mentally disturbed, I felt my reputation as a poet had been validated. More to the point, I felt optimistic and more enthusiastic than ever about my chosen art form, concluding that if an audience would turn out for a reading on a wet Wednesday in Wensleydale, then there is still a place for poetry in the hearts and minds of the British public. At the same time, I was happy to concede that it was hardly a rigorous anthropological survey, not least because the north tends to be home ground for me, something of a safe bet. And once I'd dried out, I started to wonder about making another journey as an itinerant but this time in unfamiliar territory and terrain.

After consulting a map of National Trails and other long-distance footpaths in the UK, I decided those criteria were best met by the outward section of the South West Coast Path. By a bizarre coincidence, at 256 miles it also happens to be the same length as the Pennine Way. So, in late August of this year, I intend to leave Minehead and, blisters permitting, arrive at the toe-end end of Britain's outstretched leg in mid-September. Some preliminary research about the point of departure (typing the word Minehead into Google) threw up the Butlins website, and as well as being surprised that the holiday camp still exists, I was amazed to find myself navigating through photographs of stylish apartments and funky-looking restaurants rather than black-and-white images of the leisure gulags of old. How better to begin a test of poetic value through the touristy south-west than by pitting myself against professional singers, seasoned comics and recognised performers on the entertainment circuit? Single-room supplement aside, how about it, Butlins?

A "moderate pace" - according to the guidebooks - means about 13 miles a day, so very quickly I'll be into Coleridge country, hoping not to experience too much of the poetic interruptus associated with Porlock, and passing along the northern fringe of Exmoor national park. Apart from odd visits to resort towns, I don't know the coast of Somerset or North Devon at all, and I have no idea if there are local bylaws restricting the free movement of practising poets along the shoreline. As the peninsula narrows, I'm hoping to find gainful employment on the south coast of Cornwall as well the north, maybe in Falmouth or Fowey. Does the Minack theatre, that staggering amphitheatre hewn from the cliffs near Porthcurno, need a one-off poetry reading as part of its summer schedule? And I hope to be invited into the Cornish interior as well, to its homes and halls, because I know from experience, and socioeconomic indicators, that the inland communities and the seaside towns of that county are two very different worlds. For the most part, though, and in vivid contrast to the Pennines, this journey will be at sea-level, and with the sea as a permanent companion. A journey of tidal rhythms, of more exotic natural history, changing accents and even a separate language. I can't imagine getting lost in the way I did in the Cheviots or on Cross Fell, but I also know from a literary hike from St Ives (Virginia Woolf) to Gurnard's Head (WS Graham via DH Lawrence) that the constant descending and ascending of gullies and cloughs is hard on the calves and thighs. And from trying and failing to ford the deceptively deep and swift-running Hayle estuary, I know that occasionally three miles have to be walked to travel one.

Land's End amusement park sounds like a hell hole so I'm not planning to hang around there, but instead to overshoot the mainland and arrive by ferry in the Isles of Scilly at around the time of a full moon; not for romantic purposes, but for reasons associated with planetary gravitational forces. Because, at certain times in the lunar cycle it is possible to carry on walking between some of the islands, from Tresco to Bryher, then Bryher to Samson, whose population, according to the 2001 census, is "(1)". I only hope that person likes contemporary verse.

I put an itinerary up on my website about six weeks ago and I've already had offers of readings and B&Bs at about half the stops. Nothing yet, though, for Lynton or Lynmouth or long tracts of the Devon coast. I've dangled a carrot in front of the Eden Project, but to only a muted response. I've also been experimenting with a protractor and a pencil, and plotting a course to British territories even further afield. The last time I heard, the people of the Falkland Islands were still hungover from celebrating the results of a referendum on sovereignty, but curiosity, or perhaps even masochism, compels me to wonder how many of its 2,841 citizens would be interested in a poetry reading, especially if I promise not to read that one with the word Malvinas in it? The art of walking on water is something I am yet to perfect, but if there is an offer of a seat on a direct flight from St Mary's airport in the Isles of Scilly to Stanley in the South Atlantic, to be paid for with a poem, then please get in touch.
Topics

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Simon Armitage: a poetic pilgrimage around Devon and Cornwall

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After walking the Pennine Waya couple of summers ago I swore I'd never do it again, and I haven't changed my mind. It was a 21-day slog across saturated uplands, most of it in a blur of lead-coloured mist.

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This is perhaps a controversial review made about one of Armitage's poetry collections since most see him as a great poet throughout the country but why not see what you make of it?

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can engage 15 and 16-year olds; his trade mark 'street wise' tone makes them a hit in the classroom, where they are genuinely enjoyed. He is also a solid and amusing performer of his work, at the numerous readings organised for Poetry Live.

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An interview with Mr Armitage including his thoughts about violence, the old English that still influences today's poetry and his other projects along with a rather bright and distracting drawing of his face…

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"My father thought it bloody queer/ The day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear."

The first thing I notice about Simon Armitage is that he is still sporting the rebellious earring of poetical fame. Apart from this, he is an unassuming, subdued presence, sitting silently in the corner of the poetry workshop 'Salutation and Cat' we are attending. The moment Simon reads a poem aloud, however, all inconspicuousness disapparates. He has a magical voice, melodic and resonant, which leaves the room in awed hush.

By the end of the session (which is wonderful, by the way, and I recommend it hugely to poetry lovers) I'm a bit star-struck, and I fumble around with the Dictaphone, accidentally playing a test recording. Simon wryly jokes that I've forgotten to delete my last interview with Justin Bieber, "the last one before he went completely mad". Finally I get it working, and we begin.

Most of us first met Simon Armitage in our GCSE poetry anthologies. His catchy, irreverent and accessible style got even the categorically uninterested members of my class listening. My favourite poems were the dark ones - 'Hitcher', for example, in which a frustrated office worker clubs a carefree hitchhiker to death with a krooklok - "Stitch that, I remember thinking/ You can walk from there." In 2008 (my Year 10) the inclusion of such "shocking" poems was debated when Duffy's 'Education for Leisure' (a young narrator stalks the streets with a bread knife) was banned from the syllabus.

Armitage remembers it well. "I thought that was absolutely ridiculous. I think there was actually only one registered complaint. The poem was removed in the midst of a spate of knife crime, and in that climate it's easy to start jumping at every word. But I think children are generally very good at drawing a line between what is real and what is imaginary. And if you're going to remove any mention of violence from the syllabus, you'd have to start with all of Shakespeare."

I wonder what Armitage thinks of the English syllabus at Oxford, with its strong and unusual focus on Old English. He praises this emphasis. "I like the fact that we cherish original poems in our language, and unless we keep reminding ourselves what that language is, we're going to be unable to appreciate it in the original or translate it. Besides, I quite like the idea that in the coffee houses of Oxford you're all sitting round speaking Old English to each other."

I press the question further before he can discover just how flatteringly optimistic this representation of my Old English skills is. Surely the British bias against a module in European literature is a tad nationalistic? He laughs. "If you're studying English it comes with the territory. If you want to do French, do French!"

Armitage's passion for our linguistic heritage is expressed in his wonderfully rollicking translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I ask him what is lost and what is gained in such a free interpretation. "What is lost is etymological fidelity. Certain scholars will spend their whole life trying to understand the meaning of a word and then find its contemporary counterpart. They would argue that any deviation from a strict translation is taking you away from the meaning of the poem which, by definition, must be true. I think what is gained from the way I've translated the poem is a re-affirmation of its power. If you want to keep the alliteration, you're going to have to find other words; you're going to have to go slightly further afield. So it's a trade off, but from my point of view as a practising poet, without its musicality, without its sonic qualities, it's just a story. It's just fine threads that haven't been woven together."

This is not Armitage's only unusual project. To name but a few: documentaries about technology and history; a musical about pornography; his band, The Scaremongers (listen for proof of the melodious voice). Most recently he undertook a long walk, "from Minehead in Somerset down to Land's End and then across the Scilly Isles". He journeyed as a sort of travelling bard, swapping poetry readings for a bed and a burger, and chatting along the way with whoever's interested. Why that route?

"I did it because it seemed a complementary but opposite project to the Pennine way walk I did in 2010, which had been high, inland moorland, and to a certain extent on my own territory. So I wanted to find a walk that would take me away from home and be coastal. It strained a lot of new muscles! I was also interested in the idea of performing in tourist towns - to see if a poet could make his living next to the Punch and Judy stand." And was he successful? "Well, I'm still here."

I ask him what he's working on at the moment. "I have a new collection of poetry that will be out next year. I'm translating Pearl, one of the other poems from the Gawain manuscript, and I'm working on a stage adaptation of The Iliad - The Last Days of Troy."

Armitage's varied work is also often political, although he has expressed diffidence about "poems that wave flags". I ask him whether poetry should try to change the world, or just reflect it. He replies quickly: "I don't think it's a good idea to start being prescriptive about what poetry should and should not do. Poetry should be free. As you develop, the things you want to write about will develop and transform too, so setting rules is only going to hinder you."

But as one of few truly influential poets of our time, does he ever feel a pressure to write about something? "I've never had anyone beating down my door demanding a poem..."

But to yourself? "Well, yes. Sometimes I am inspired by an event and then feel a moral duty to write about it, but that's a responsibility only to my own conscience. Once, Seamus Heaney was accosted by a Sinn Fein official on a train. The man upbraided him for not writing something on behalf of the republican prisoners who were then on what was called 'the dirty protest' in the Maze Prison, striking for the right to be treated as political prisoners. Seamus understood the situation, but he said, 'look, if I'm going to write anything - I'll write it for myself.'"

It's a mark of Simon Armitage's charisma, (and really, really nice voice), that it doesn't sound cheesy for him to conclude: "And he was right. With poetry, you always have to be true to yourself."

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"My father thought it bloody queer/ The day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear." The first thing I notice about Simon Armitage is that he is still sporting the rebellious earring of poetical fame.

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An analysis of 'About His Person'. It's pretty much everything we've talked about in class, only with some graphics and interactive-y stuff. There's also some analysis's of other poems on here that we haven't studied in class...

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Like 'Poem' and 'I am Very Bothered', 'About his Person' is about how we can construct a sense of people from just a few details.

This poem is like a detective story, with the reader constructing the character, his past life, and what has happened to him from a series of clues.

Some of these clues are fairly easy to decipher: We can, for instance, quickly work out that that some important event was cancelled and that this man wasn't very happy about the fact. But other clues remain impossible to solve, questions remain unanswered.

'About his person' is the expression police use when they go through the items found on a dead body.

However clever we may think we are, we can never work out exactly what happened. Nor can we really be sure about the man's character.

The poem starts off as being fun, a game, a sort of intellectual puzzle, full of plays on words, or puns.

But the seriousness of the last few lines makes us think of this man as a real person. Someone who has been found this way, all alone in the world, dead after some terrible act - probably of suicide. It makes us feel sympathy for him as a human being who has suffered.

Through his choice of words, particularly his verbs, Armitage subtly suggests either the violence of the man's death, or of the events that led up to it:
'Stamped' 'Slashed' 'Stopped' 'Final' 'Beheaded' 'Fist'
He uses a lot of lines that could be read in more than one way. This is partly because Armitage plays on the meaning of words, he uses puns, but also because the details could be taken as metaphors for the man's life.
The following table contains lines from the poem, with several explanations or meanings to them...

About his person

[*] What we can tell about him as a character [*] What we can tell about his life [*] What he's got on his body

A final demand

[*] Could be from a company, or utility provider, such as British Gas. This might suggest the man was running very low on money [*] Or it could be a letter he was going to send, demanding some end [*] Or it could be a letter from another person in the story, demanding something of the man

Planted there like a spray carnation

[*] Might be suspicious as if this is a set up [*] Could be a metaphor for love or marriage [*] Could be an ironic description of a suicide note

That was everything

[*] That was the all he had on his body [*] What he's got on his body

The poem is written in couplets, in 2 line stanzas in which the first and second line rhyme.

The first four rhymes are not full; they are half rhymes.

This creates a slightly off key feel, as if there's something not quite right. A similar effect is created by the irregular rhythm.

Perhaps the rhythm creates the feel that something is not quite right, the lines, like the clues not quite fitting in place, not quite going together enough to make a whole?

The poem is also in the form of a list, like a police report. There is asense of some order trying to be imposed on a distressing experience.

The subject of this poem appears to be how difficult it is to understand other people's lives.

Although at first it seems we might be able to piece together this character and his story the 'clues' prove to be very tricky.

Like 'Poem', 'I am very bothered' and 'It ain't what', it deals with questions of identity. What makes us us; our actions, our belongings, our desires?

Perhaps too the poem is questioning how death is treated in popular crime fiction, where the whodunit element is more important than the human suffering it usually revolves around.

The use of puns and the detective element of the poem might encourage us not to take it too seriously.

But the subtle suggestions of violence coupled with the last lines make us feel some genuine emotion for this character who has lost love and his life: 'No gold or sliver, but crowning one finger a ring of white unweathered skin. That was everything.'

The form of the poem imitates a police list.

The language cleverly avoids being pinned to one meaning. The details are elusive, we cannot complete the picture. Armitage achieves this through using puns, and language that hints at metaphorical meanings.

The rhymes move from being half rhymes to full ones in the middle of the poem to half rhymes again.

This creates the sense of things not being quite resolved, all the pieces not quite fitting together. The half rhymes at the end draw attention to themselves, allowing us to stop and think about their meaning.

And in the end this seems to be what Armitage is saying:
We may be able to work out a lot, but other people always must remain something of a mystery to us.

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Overview /**/ Like 'Poem' and 'I am Very Bothered', 'About his Person' is about how we can construct a sense of people from just a few details. This poem is like a detective story, with the reader constructing the character, his past life, and what has happened to him from a series of clues.

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Here is a collection of Simon Armitage's poems.

He was born in Marsden, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire on 26th May 1963. He first studied in Linthwaite, Huddersfield and studied Geography at uni. The first award he won was the Eric Gregory Award in 1988. The highlight of his career was winning a BAFTA in 2003 . Pretty much the only BAFTA from 2003 that wasn't won by Catherine Zeta Jones of Lord of the Rings: Two Towers.

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Simon Armitage - Simon Armitage Poems - Poem Hunter

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Browse through Simon Armitage's poems and quotes. 12 poems of Simon Armitage. Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise, The Road Not Taken, If You Forget Me, Dreams. a British poet, playwright, and novelist.Life and careerSimon Armitage was.

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Milly Storr

There is an collection of Simon armitage's poems

1. About His Person  1/3/2003

2. At Sea  11/29/2011

3. Cataract Operation  /3/2003

4. I Am Very Bothered  1/3/2003

5. I Say I Say I Say  1/3/2003

6. It Ain't What You Do, It's What It Does To You  1/3/2003

7. Poem  1/3/2003

8. The Golden Toddy  1/3/2003

9. The Hard  1/3/2003

10. The Jay 1/3/2003

11. The Tyre 2003

12. Zoom! (Bloodaxe, 1989)Xanadu (1992)

13. Kid (1992)

14. Book of Matches (1993)

15. The Dead Sea Poems (1995)

16. CloudCuckooLand (1997)

17. Killing Time. (1999)

18. Selected Poems (2001)

19. The Universal Home Doctor (2002)

20. Travelling Songs (2002)

21. The Shout: Selected Poems (2005)

22. Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus

23. The Corduroy Kid (2006)

24. The Not Dead (2008)

25. Out of the Blue (2008)

26. Seeing Stars (2010)

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Armitage has some stuff to say on poetry, riots and Yorkshire.

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Poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been writing about Britain for decades now. In the latest in our National Conversations series of interviews, Armitage talks to John Harris about the obstinate nature of poetry and the culture of violence in Britain that he believes precipitated the UK riots

* Listen to a longer version of this interview

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Simon Armitage: 'poetry is a form of dissent' - video interview

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Poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been writing about Britain for decades now.

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Born in Huddersfield, Armitage trained in social work at Manchester University. He won an Eric Gregory Award (1988), the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (1993), and was made Poet in Residence for the New Millennium Experience Company in 1999. Drawing upon his experiences as a probation officer, Armitage's work often tackles themes of class, identity, and masculinity. His treatment of contemporary issues combined with his energetic and down-to-earth style has made Armitage one of the most popular poets of his generation.

I also found a picture of him smiling kind of...

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And this is a documentary thingy he did, and I only watched up until 0:14 seconds through but it started in Hastings with him standing in front of the pier BEFORE IT BURNT DOWN and so I thought that this was not only topical but also locally relevant and therefore v. interesting

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A montage of Simon's best shots

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Simon Armitage has taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and as a senior lecturer Manchester Metropolitan University. He has been a Professor of Poetry at Sheffield University since 2011. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004.

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Megan (a name which sounds so boring compared to The Wise Barnabus)

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Megan (a name which sounds so boring compared to The Wise Barnabus)

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Firstly, I clicked on his biography and see he has a collection of poems under the name Xanadu. That's my old horses name so already I like this man. 'Ivor Gurney has always struck me as the most spontaneous of the war poets; not as confident as Sassoon or as accomplished as Owen, but alert and curious, with an unexpected turn of phrase and an eye for the comradeship of war as well as its horror. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that Gurney felt less tortured and crazed in the trenches than he did as a civilian, particularly in later life when his mind and nerves went to pieces, leading to long periods of hospitalisation. From that confinement, some of his more paranoid poems took the form of long rambling to letters to the police; in my own piece, I picture him escaping from the war in his head to a pacific and spiritual destination in the far distance, where he might find peace and rest.' I like how he talks about being inspired by a war poet not so well known as the others. This quote shows his him in a really positive way because its almost like he wants the soldiers to find heaven or possibly paradise. I like him.

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i know this is a bit of a touchy thing to post and a little depressing but i thought it was worth pointing it out anyways.

Armitage wrote a poem about the Madeleine McCann disappearance called 'the Beacon' to mark the 1,000 days she has been missing.

this isn't the first time Armitage has written about, he also wrote about 9/11 too called 'out of the blue'

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'' Armitage’s family also features in his poetry; his father was a probation officer, as was Armitage himself until 1994, and he has written extensively about him in his collection of essays All Points North. Armitage writes about his father’s work in the tyre trade, as well as about watching a pantomime he directed and produced. Adolescence and growing up are common themes in Armitage’s work and he visits schools and colleges regularly to discuss poetry and his own work with young people.''

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' Armitage’s family also features in his poetry; his father was a probation officer, as was Armitage himself until 1994, and he has written extensively about him in his collection of essays All Points North. Armitage writes about his father’s work in the tyre trade, as well as about watching a pantomime he directed and produced.

Adolescence and growing up are common themes in Armitage’s work and he visits schools and colleges regularly to discuss poetry and his own work with young people. '

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This website claims to have every single one of his poems avalible to read:

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Simon Armitage - Simon Armitage Poems - Poem Hunter

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Browse through Simon Armitage's poems and quotes. 12 poems of Simon Armitage. Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise, The Road Not Taken, If You Forget Me, Dreams. a British poet, playwright, and novelist.Life and careerSimon Armitage was.

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Imogen Rogers

Simon Armitage was born in Yorkshire, and included a lot of Yorkshire history in his poems  and he said that walking around the moors gave him ‘great thinking time’  so the Yorkshire moors must be quite big as he’s written over 5000 poems as well as books and TV shows etc His first collection of poems was based on his time working as a probation office after his father so I can’t imagine these would be the cheeriest of poems likewise  he was also a member of the band the scaremongers  the dictionary definition being ‘a person who spreads frightening or ominous reports or rumors’. So he may like to keep his poetry closely linked to his past in the band buy writing depressive poems? Although he was also a choir boy and his family were involved with plays and performances in the local church and maybe he became quite depressive because his voice broke?

( Plus when typing into Google ‘Simon Armitage sad’ there were 31,300 more results than typing in ‘Simon armitage happy’ so if he balanced out the search result  a bit more by smiling etc then his poems might be a bit more cheery- but would they be as good?)

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Well, after some consideration, I think Simon Armitage is unreasonably gloomy; my justification being: he's a Yorkshire boy and since my whole family is from there.... I know that they are an extremely jolly bunch up there. Can't go anywhere without someone saying 'Good Morning', there's no strangers there, everyone knows everyone. So, I don't think he should be THAT gloomy. But, as previously mentioned, he did get himself into quite a depressive place, being a probation officer and all. He probably witnessed many people's lives deteriorate into nothing more often than he saw any hope. That's probably why he takes life with a drop of lemon juice rather than sugar. He seems drained a little but extremely wise to the ways of the world.

And plus, if he always walks in awful weather then he has to be a little damp in the soul.

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Simon Armitage's Website

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Today's one of those days when you feel very lazy, so here l will copy and paste a section of the Wikipedia article on Simon Armitage. Take my word for it, it is a very fabulous Wikipedia article...

Writing.

Armitage's poetry collections include Book of Matches(1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998), a collection of essays on Northern England. He produced a dramatised version of Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poetry entitled Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), both of which were published in July 2006. Many of Armitage's poems appear in the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance)GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include "Homecoming", "November", "Kid", "Hitcher", and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these "Mother any distance...". His writing is characterised by a dry Yorkshire wit combined with "an accessible, realist style and critical seriousness."[2] His translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007), was adopted for the ninth edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and he was the narrator of a 2010 BBC documentary about the poem and its use of landscape.[4]

Armitage also writes for radio, television, film and stage. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles. He is currently writing a fifth, The Last Days of Troy, to be premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in June 2014.[5] He was commissioned in 1996 by the National Theatre in London to write Eclipse for the National Connections series, a play inspired by the real-life disappearance of a girl in Hebden Bridge, and set at the time of the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall.[6] Most recently he wrote the libretto for an opera scored by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae, The Assassin Tree, based on a Greek myth recounted in The Golden Bough. The opera premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland, before moving to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Saturday Night (Century Films, BBC2, 1996) – wrote and narrated a fifty minute poetic commentary to a documentary about night-life in Leeds, directed by Brian Hill. In 2010, Armitage walked the 264-mile Pennine Way, walking south from Scotland to Derbyshire. Along the route he stopped to give poetry readings, often in exchange for donations of money, food or accommodation and has written a book about his journey, called Walking Home.[1]

He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including The Sunday Times Author of the Year, a Forward Prize, a Lannan Award, and an Ivor Novello Award for his song lyrics in the Channel 4film Feltham Sings. Kid and CloudCuckooLand were short-listed for the Whitbread poetry prize. The Dead Sea Poems was short-listed for the Whitbread, the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Universal Home Doctor was also short-listed for the T.S. Eliot. In 2000, he was the UK's official Millennium Poet and went on to judge the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize, the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize.

In 2004, Armitage was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.[7] He is a vice president of the Poetry Society and a patron of the Arvon Foundation.

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Some info about Simon armitage.. Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He was also a post-graduate student at Manchester University. In February 2011 he took up the position as Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. He lives in West Yorkshire.  Armitage's poetry collections include Book of Matches (1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998),

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Barnaby now has his own space for random thoughts...you can find it here...

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Barnaby now has his own space for random thoughts...you can find it here...

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http://padlet.com/wall/thewisebarnabus

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If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?

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Alfie Corroll

What influences from his life might we see in his work?

Armitage, or Professor Armitage, is a very interesting soul. He is a country boy. Before he was a poet, he did his MA on the effects of television violence on young offenders and worked as a Prohibition Officer, in Greater Manchester. I think Armitage is quite depressing, when he reads his poems he reads them like he is about to die of boredom, but I like him. 'The poems being carved into six stones at various sites along the South Pennine watershed between Marsden and Ilkley, now forming the 45 mile Stanza Stones Trail. The project was hosted by Ilkley Literature Festival. The mystery seventh stone, sited in an unnamed location, has yet to be found.' - Interesting! I think he does do really interesting work he is just a bit glum. 'Poems can be gloomy, and sometimes so can I' - Armitage. http://www.simonarmitage.com/biography.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFRunJuVpY8 - This episode is from a series where Simon talks about what inspired his own and other famous poems. We should watch this in lesson! It;s very good!

Maybe he just didn't really enjoy his life that much, he always sees the depressing side of things- I think he likes to pick out the bad/sad parts of life just to gently remind us and invite us to remember the world isn't perfect. He is a bit like 'meh'.

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And now for the news near you from Benny

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And now for the news near you from Benny

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Well I'm not really sure how to do this Simon armitage h/w - I mean there is a seriously lack of any meaningful or noteworthy Biography - Wikipedia says the same as his website. All that I may conclude from reading what I can find on the internet is that perhaps Simon is a slightly troubled soul. For instance, look at his picture - for it shows to me that he feels that he may only speak through his pen (or had hired an oddball Photographer. As we can see his poems have a recurring dark theme - and it appears he also wrote a play about a real life murder which he set during a solar eclipse (sounds odd to me). Also he likes long walks and being a roving poet with no fixed address - perhaps he felt trapped as a child and likes to feel free on long walks. Anyway that was mostly a load of codswallop - my brain is aching most severly (SOMEBODY - although I shall not name names, gave me that cold again and I dragged myself out of my comfortable bed because I don't know when this homework is due)

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What is the point of slugs? l mean really think about it.

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If deep has depth, why doesn't steep have stepth?

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but i can write in here

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Mrs Brooks...testing testing...1,2,3