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The Unaccompanied

Poems

Author Simon Armitage
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Hardcover
$27.00 US
Knopf
On sale Aug 01, 2017 | 96 Pages | 9781524732424
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A powerful new collection of poetry from the National Book Critics Circle Award nominee and recipient of the Forward Poetry Prize 

In The Unaccompanied, Armitage gives voice to the people of Britain with a haunting grace. We meet characters whose sense of isolation is both emotional and political, both real and metaphorical, from a son made to groom the garden hedge as punishment, to a nurse standing alone at a bus stop as the centuries pass by, to a latter-day Odysseus looking for enlightenment and hope in the shadowy underworld of a cut-price supermarket. We see the changing shape of England itself, viewed from a satellite "like a shipwreck's carcass raised on a sea-crane's hook, / nothing but keel, beams, spars, down to its bare bones." In this exquisite collection, Armitage X-rays the weary but ironic soul of his nation, with its "Songs about mills and mines and a great war, / lines about mermaids and solid gold hills, / songs from broken hymnbooks and cheesy films"--in poems that blend the lyrical and the vernacular, with his trademark eye for detail and biting wit.
Last Snowman


He drifted south

down an Arctic seaway

on a plinth of ice, jelly tots

weeping lime green tears

around both eyes,

a carrot for a nose

(some reported parsnip),

below which a clay pipe

drooped from a mouth

that was pure stroke victim.

A red woolen scarf trailed

in the meltwater drool

at his base, and he slumped

to starboard, kinked,

gone at the pelvis.

From the buffet deck

of a passing cruise liner

stag and hen parties shied

Scotch eggs and Pink Ladies

as he rounded the stern.

He sailed on between banks

of rubberneckers

and camera lenses

into a bloodshot west,

past islands vigorous

with sunflower and bog myrtle,

singular and abominable.



The Present


I shove up through the old plantation—larch

out of season, drab, drained of all greenness,

widowed princesses in moth-eaten furs—

and stride out onto the lap of the moor.

Rotten and rusted, a five-bar gate

lies felled in the mud, letting the fields escape.

Winter is late and light this year, thin snow

half puddled, sun still trapped in the earth,

sludge underfoot all the way to the ridge.

And no sign of the things I came here to find,

except in a high nick at the valley head

where a wet north-facing lintel of rock

has cornered and cupped enough of the wind

for dripping water to freeze. Icicles:

once, I unrooted some six-foot tusk

from the waterfall’s crystalized overhang,

lowered it down and stood it on end, then stared

at an ice age locked in its glassy depths,

at far hills bottled in its weird lens.

These are brittle and timid and rare, and weep

in my gloved fist as I ferry them home.

I’d wanted to offer my daughter

a taste of the glacier, a sense of the world

being pinned in place by a diamond-like cold

at each pole, but I open my hand

and there’s nothing to pass on, nothing to hold.



Nurse at a Bus Stop


The slow traffic takes a good long look.

Jilted bride of public transport,

alone in the shelter,

the fireproof bin and shatterproof glass

scrawled with the cave art of cocks and hearts.

It’s late, Friday, the graveyard shift, you’re ready

to dab blood from a split lip,

to hold the hand of cancer till the line goes flat.

Cardigan, sensible shoes, the kids

with a neighbor, fob watch pinned

like a medal to your breast.

Winter sharpens the day.

The centuries crawl past,

none of them going your way.
Copyright © 2017 by Simon Armitage. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Paul Wolfgang Webster
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, he has published eleven collections of poetry, including Seeing Stars, Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989 – 2014, and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Shout: Selected Poems, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and his translation of the medieval poem Pearl received the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He writes extensively for radio and television, has published three best-selling non-fiction titles, and his theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. He has taught at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and in 2015 was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. View titles by Simon Armitage

About

A powerful new collection of poetry from the National Book Critics Circle Award nominee and recipient of the Forward Poetry Prize 

In The Unaccompanied, Armitage gives voice to the people of Britain with a haunting grace. We meet characters whose sense of isolation is both emotional and political, both real and metaphorical, from a son made to groom the garden hedge as punishment, to a nurse standing alone at a bus stop as the centuries pass by, to a latter-day Odysseus looking for enlightenment and hope in the shadowy underworld of a cut-price supermarket. We see the changing shape of England itself, viewed from a satellite "like a shipwreck's carcass raised on a sea-crane's hook, / nothing but keel, beams, spars, down to its bare bones." In this exquisite collection, Armitage X-rays the weary but ironic soul of his nation, with its "Songs about mills and mines and a great war, / lines about mermaids and solid gold hills, / songs from broken hymnbooks and cheesy films"--in poems that blend the lyrical and the vernacular, with his trademark eye for detail and biting wit.

Excerpt

Last Snowman


He drifted south

down an Arctic seaway

on a plinth of ice, jelly tots

weeping lime green tears

around both eyes,

a carrot for a nose

(some reported parsnip),

below which a clay pipe

drooped from a mouth

that was pure stroke victim.

A red woolen scarf trailed

in the meltwater drool

at his base, and he slumped

to starboard, kinked,

gone at the pelvis.

From the buffet deck

of a passing cruise liner

stag and hen parties shied

Scotch eggs and Pink Ladies

as he rounded the stern.

He sailed on between banks

of rubberneckers

and camera lenses

into a bloodshot west,

past islands vigorous

with sunflower and bog myrtle,

singular and abominable.



The Present


I shove up through the old plantation—larch

out of season, drab, drained of all greenness,

widowed princesses in moth-eaten furs—

and stride out onto the lap of the moor.

Rotten and rusted, a five-bar gate

lies felled in the mud, letting the fields escape.

Winter is late and light this year, thin snow

half puddled, sun still trapped in the earth,

sludge underfoot all the way to the ridge.

And no sign of the things I came here to find,

except in a high nick at the valley head

where a wet north-facing lintel of rock

has cornered and cupped enough of the wind

for dripping water to freeze. Icicles:

once, I unrooted some six-foot tusk

from the waterfall’s crystalized overhang,

lowered it down and stood it on end, then stared

at an ice age locked in its glassy depths,

at far hills bottled in its weird lens.

These are brittle and timid and rare, and weep

in my gloved fist as I ferry them home.

I’d wanted to offer my daughter

a taste of the glacier, a sense of the world

being pinned in place by a diamond-like cold

at each pole, but I open my hand

and there’s nothing to pass on, nothing to hold.



Nurse at a Bus Stop


The slow traffic takes a good long look.

Jilted bride of public transport,

alone in the shelter,

the fireproof bin and shatterproof glass

scrawled with the cave art of cocks and hearts.

It’s late, Friday, the graveyard shift, you’re ready

to dab blood from a split lip,

to hold the hand of cancer till the line goes flat.

Cardigan, sensible shoes, the kids

with a neighbor, fob watch pinned

like a medal to your breast.

Winter sharpens the day.

The centuries crawl past,

none of them going your way.
Copyright © 2017 by Simon Armitage. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

© Paul Wolfgang Webster
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, he has published eleven collections of poetry, including Seeing Stars, Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989 – 2014, and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Shout: Selected Poems, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and his translation of the medieval poem Pearl received the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He writes extensively for radio and television, has published three best-selling non-fiction titles, and his theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. He has taught at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and in 2015 was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. View titles by Simon Armitage

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