Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989–2014
The Poet Laureate’s essential selection of poems: the author’s own choice of work from across a quarter-century of publishing.
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When Simon Armitage burst on to the poetry scene in 1989 with his spectacular debut Zoom!, readers were introduced to an exceptional new talent who would reshape the landscape of contemporary poetry in the years to come. Now, Armitage’s reputation as one of the nation’s most original, most respected and most influential poets seems secure. Paper Aeroplane: Poems 1989–2014 is the author’s own choice of work from across a quarter-century of publishing. Drawing upon all of his award-winning poetry collections, including Kid, Book of Matches, The Universal Home Doctor, Seeing Stars and The Unaccompanied, as well as his medieval translations and verse dramas, Paper Aeroplane represents a generous and thrilling gathering of work from one of contemporary poetry’s most essential voices.
What surprises is how urgent and contemporary his early poems still read ... this selected poems proves that he has written some of the very best, most memorable poems of recent decades ... a writer who has had a game-changing influence on his contemporaries, and continues to cast a shadow over younger poets.
There is no other poet writing in modern Britain who has his feeling for its words and things: the cashpoints, the power tools, the "mail-order driftwood"; the clichés, the jokes, the unspoken emotions. ... the most popular English poet since Larkin.
Armitage is that rare beast: a poet whose work is ambitious, accomplished and complex as well as popular.
The best poet of his generation.
The first poet of serious artistic intent since Philip Larkin to have achieved popularity ... it is possible that he will attain the sort of proverbial status Larkin now occupies.
His verse is immediate, entertaining, engaged with the world, and his ear for the cadences of English is terrific.
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His collections of poetry, which have received numerous prizes and awards, include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). He writes extensively for television…
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