Simon Armitage walking home

New book out today from the big Armitage and it may interest you to know that poetandgeek organised the first gig on the troubadour Pennine walk he describes. It was at Abbotsford, the home of Walter Scott, in the Scottish Borders. He collected money in a sock and then left without signing books. Shame.

We hadn't offered him a lift from Berwick station suggesting he might like to take the bus to get into the spirit of the thing. And things seemed to go downhill from there a little. Oh well. And so another celebrity encounter failed to quite live up to expectations.

He did read Shout which is the one I hoped he would; one of my favourite poems apart from the one about hairspray spores. Probably shouldn't quote anything here because... But they are both in his 1989 Bloodaxe book Zoom. I think.

And in fact you can listen to The Shout here http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=88