Simon Armitage on Ted Hughes, trying to write during the lockdown and drive-in poetry

As a child, Simon Armitage used to climb trees near his home in Marsden.
Marsden-born Simon Armitage the UK’s 21st Poet Laureate. (PA).Marsden-born Simon Armitage the UK’s 21st Poet Laureate. (PA).
Marsden-born Simon Armitage the UK’s 21st Poet Laureate. (PA).

Half a century or so later he still calls the Pennine village his home, though you’re more likely to find him doing a podcast from his garden shed than climbing trees these days.

Like many of us, he’s been spending more time working from home than he had envisaged doing this year which has meant he’s become more familiar with both his shed and his writing room than he might have liked.

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Of course 2020 wasn’t supposed to be like this. In February, he launched LYR, billed as an ‘ambient post-rock band’ alongside musician Richard Walters and producer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Pearson. The following month his latest poetry collection, Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems, a homage to the windswept hills that shaped his poetic vision, came out garnering widespread praise.

Simon Armitage was Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s poet in residence in 2017. (Bruce Rollinson).Simon Armitage was Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s poet in residence in 2017. (Bruce Rollinson).
Simon Armitage was Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s poet in residence in 2017. (Bruce Rollinson).

A week later, though, and the country went into lockdown. “As it has been for everyone it’s been frustrating, it’s been bewildering, but I don’t feel particularly disrupted by it because I’ve always been quite industrious,” says Armitage. “With the band it was a bit frustrating because we’d just got it up and running and we’d done a couple of shows, but for other people whose full-time career that is, it’s been a disaster. At least as a writer you can hunker down and carry on and that’s effectively what I’ve been doing.

“It’s not what I’d choose to do, I don’t want to write every day and there have been times when it’s been difficult to write. I think there’s an expectation because of all this ‘free time’ that you’ll be able to just do it, but there’s a very troubled world out there and a lot of sadness and anxiety and I’ve talked to a lot of writers about this who have found it difficult to concentrate.”

Perhaps because of the variety, and volume, of his work Armitage has managed to keep busy himself. “I’m a bit of a kitchen sink writer. I like the encounters of everyday life and those encounters have largely stopped or become very familiar – I’ve written several poems about this room,” he says, with a chuckle. “In fact I’ve two poems about this Velux window that you can’t see.”

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Next month he’s due to hold a special poetry drive-in event as part of Sheffield’s Off The Shelf festival, performing for a socially distanced audience in their cars. It’s a way, he says, of hopefully making a live event happen.

“I’ve been a bit reluctant to do readings over the internet because I like having that contact and the idea of taking the poems out from where they’re made, but one day I was out in the car thinking ‘this is the safest place to be and you could have your family in it,’” he says. “I don’t know what to expect, maybe there will be some new form of in-car applause like flashing headlights, or honk if you like the poem.”

He will also be premiering two new works commissioned by Off The Shelf celebrating Ted Hughes’s time in Mexborough. Hughes is a poet who has always loomed large on his horizon. “I don’t think you ever escape the gravity of those early influences, especially if you encounter them at an impressionable age as I did. They sort of set the standard and they continually remind you of why you wanted to write in the first place.

“Hughes was this person from the next valley and as well as finding his work inspiring I found his journey inspiring, too. This idea that if he could do it then coming from a similar background and in a similar-looking house, then I might be able to do it as well.”

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As Armitage points out, those pivotal years Hughes spent in Mexborough forged his future vision. “It’s often overshadowed by the time he spent in the Calder Valley because Ted Hughes is associated with Heptonstall and Hebden Bridge, even though he only lived there until he was eight. A lot of his formative experiences that led him to the writing were actually in quite a different environment in Mexborough.”

Just as Hughes made a big splash with his first poetry collection, The Hawk in the Rain, back in 1957, so, too, did Armitage with Zoom! 32 years later.

Since then, he’s gone on to become one of the best known, and busiest, poets working today. He’s also written a couple of novels, presented TV documentaries, including the splendid Gods and Monsters - Homer’s Odyssey for the BBC, and translated ancient works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Poetry, though, is his bread and butter and when it emerged this summer that GCSE students could be allowed to drop poetry in next year’s exams, Armitage was among those who felt compelled to speak out. The move to make poetry optional came amid concerns that schools may not be able to cover all areas because of the pandemic.

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“I found it disappointing on two fronts,” says Armitage. “One is that poetry is particularly popular among young people at the moment in a way that I can’t remember, mainly through the spoken word and performance poetry scene, but also what we might call page poetry as well. It just seems to be quite a natural form of expression that people have taken to in a turbulent and challenging world.

“And the other thing that is disappointing is that poetry at school is one of those few occasions when you can experience language for something other than information. It gives people a chance to play with language, so I think it’s a little bit like having the toys taken away at school.”

As Poet Laureate, he wanted to highlight the importance of poetry. “You have to choose when to say things and when not to, you can’t be voicing opinions all the time but this was something I felt strongly about.”

Armitage has always been a prolific writer and while lockdown may have disrupted his rhythm at times, it hasn’t hampered his creativity. He’s written a couple of song lyrics for Huddersfield Choral Society, been making a film for the BBC about the lockdown, finished a translation of a Middle English poem called The Owl and the Nightingale, and started work on an ancient Middle Eastern poem called Gilgamesh, as well as a new album with his band.

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“There’s a lot going on,” he says. “I’m no less busy than I was five months ago, but I feel I have to be more resourceful somehow to achieve these projects from the same kind of stationary cockpit all the time.”

The Poet Laureate’s Drive-in with Simon Armitage, October 11, Kenwood Hall Hotel, Sheffield, at 6.30pm. For more details go to www.offtheshelf.org.uk

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