King Arthur in the East Riding - Simon Armitage

3 posts / 0 new

Topic locked

Fri, 2005-07-29 14:24

This is one of the Penguin 70s books. £1.50, you can't go wrong.

I hadn't read any Simon Armitage before - this book is extracts from his prose in All Points North - memoires / stories about West Yorkshire.

And..

I thought it was brilliant. There's a day trip to Iceland with his mother, and an all male panto outing to Bridlington, extracts from his life as a probation officer. They are hilarious, and funny, and sad and the writing is outstanding.

I was so impressed I also bought his Selected poems, and I spent most of yesterday evening walking around the lounge reading them out loud, in between listening to Duran Duran and Mr Scruff cds. Gary is away in New York so I can do things like this.

Today is back to work writing, no 9 of the Penguin variations... and tonight Charlie (not a new boyfriend) but and the Chocolate Factory.

Fri, 2005-07-29 15:41

Ralph

Hi Drew I have just read 'Little Green Man' by Armitage. It's his first novel. It's ok. It's very much in the Hornby mode but nowhere near as good. Too many geezers for my liking. The autism back-story is handled very poorly. Cheers

Thu, 2005-08-11 14:47

Brooklands

Have not dared any of his prose because I like his poems too much and don't want to be disappointed. His selected has to be one of the most necessary purchases in any poetry collection. So re-readable, so many memorable images and phrases. I will never forget Zoom. I love the word cambers. So does he. Zoom It begins as a house, an end terrace in this case but it will not stop there. Soon it is an avenue which cambers arrogantly past the Mechanics' Institute, turns left at the main road without even looking and quickly it is a town with all four major clearing banks, a daily paper and a football team pushing for promotion. On it goes, oblivious of the planning Acts, the green belts, and before we know it it is out of our hands; city, nation, hemisphere, universe, hammering out in all directions until suddenly, mercifully, it is drawn aside through the eye of a black hole and bulleted into a neighbouring galaxy, emerging smaller and smoother than a billiard ball but weighing more than Saturn. People stop me in the street, badger me in the check-out queue and ask 'What is this, this that is so small and so very smooth but whose mass is greater than the ringed planet? It's just words I assure them. But they will not have it.

Topic locked