Simon Armitage: Zoom!

ZOOM! is the book which launched Simon Armitage’s meteoric rise to poetic stardom. Published by Bloodaxe Books in 1989, his debut collection was picked as the Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award (forerunner of the Costa). Twenty-five years on, he reads from his first book and talks about the poems, written at a time when he was working as a young probation officer in Manchester. The poems included in this extract from a longer recording are: ‘The Stuff’, ’Snow Joke’, ‘On Miles Platting Station’. ‘Ivory’, ‘Eighties, Nineties’, ‘It Ain’t What You Do, It’s What It Does to You’, and ‘Zoom!’. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed his reading and interview with Neil Astley at Sheffield University on 14 November 2014. The film is from the DVD-anthology IN PERSON: WORLD POETS, filmed & edited by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). The poems from ZOOM! are included in this video courtesy of the author and Bloodaxe Books: for more information on the book, see www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/prod...

[@leonardevans8691]

SA reading and talking from and about ZOOM, retrospectively, is a great treat. It is very interesting and informative to hear a little bit about how the poems came into composition. I'm interested in the creative process; where something starts, what are its imaginative influences and so on. I'm familiar with the poems from ZOOM. When I first read it it spoke directly to me with a distinctive voice. It is very interesting that SA says there is a certain 'innocence' about this collection. Maybe, but there is, for me, an energy and flow to his poetic language and a kind of bravura or panache-virtuosity even. And, of course he's writing about the extraordinary in the so called ordinary. Great stuff. I'm pleased he's now the Poet Laureate. He'll do a good job.

[@sunkrishka7418]

Excellent Thought

[@jiggerypoetry1766]

What a treat to hear these. Brilliant always.

[@TheEcowriter]

Wowzer.

[@philipbowden8065]

right man in the right job

[@zmalevo2126]

As I ambled in the gardens at Kew, I met Simon Armitage walking through. "I am King Charles's poet" saith he, "Prithee tell me, whose poet are you?"

[@AnaComesonotante]

Where was his poem You are beautiful first published?

[@BloodaxeBooks]

It was first collected in his 2006 collection Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid. It would probably have been published before that in a magazine: not sure where.

[@AnaComesonotante]

@@BloodaxeBooks thank you so much for the answer

[@Lambda25]

One of the poets that turned me off poetry during my GCSEs. Endlessly drab, grey, sometimes needlessly violent, inconsequential subject matter, fantastically boring.