“The power of language has never gone away for me. I am constantly reminded of just what an incredible tool language is; the greatest invention by humans”

Like blossom on urban streets, poet laureate Simon Armitage believes that verse can bring beauty to unexpected places – and he's on a mission to share it with as many as possible

Interview: IONA BOWER

“At 15, I wasn't interested in anything. Just sport really. Then we started reading Ted Hughes in school and I was bowled over by these little packages of language. Only black marks against a white background, but put in the right order, they make astonishing things happen in your head.” Simon Armitage is in his garret of a study, surrounded by books, “and about 200 boxes of pens” that he's accidentally hoarded over the years. You'd expect nothing less of a Poet Laureate, but he came to poetry via an unexpected route. Born in Marsden in West Yorkshire, poetry was rebellion for the teenaged Armitage. “I thought of poems as subversive, secretive,” he explains. “Something I could enjoy without having to talk to anybody else about it. As quite a furtive teenager…

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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2024

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