CloudCuckooLand

"Armitage has an idiosyncratic view of the world and an extremely interesting way of delivering that view. He makes me think twice about almost everything he writes, and quite often there’s such a twist in his sense of humour, I find it irresistible. I love this: ‘Staring into a specimen cell of my own blood, I saw a microdot of my own face looking back up, I jumped away from the lens alarmed like a man who invented the telephone and suddenly it rang.’ Yes, it is – and his imagery is unexpected, often in the extreme, and that makes you think, and that makes you look at things in a different way. One of the purposes of a poem is to take something mundane and look at it in another way so that it becomes interesting and the person reading the poem gets a different view of it, whereas before they might have passed it by. I’d like to think so, because that’s why I write the poem. When I first write something, because a thought, or an idea, or a peculiar view pops into my head and I want to get it down, it becomes an irresistible itch that I have to scratch. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and when it works it’s very satisfying. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I could have chosen any other collection by Simon Armitage , but, when you like the voice of one poet, there’s not a lot they write that isn’t going to strike a chord with you. I think we gravitate towards poets who express themselves in the way we would like to express ourselves, if only we’d thought of it. I think it depends on the individual. There are some poets whose poetry doesn’t resonate with me, and I have to say I don’t find it challenging as a result; I find it tiresome. But then that’s just me. Then there are other poets about whose work I think, ‘This is marvellous; I didn’t think of this before; look at what he/she saw and the way he/she put it – my God, that’s wonderful, brilliant or very funny’. To be made to think has to be part of the process, otherwise we’re all… Yes. Well put. The next book I’ve chosen is John Kinsella’s Poems 1980-1984 . His poetry is often rooted in Australia and I lived in Australia for years."