Acclaimed Poet Reads Work

Among the stately high ceilings and rare books collections of Houghton Library’s Edison-Newman Room, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage read select poems evoking images of his native English landscape before a packed audience last night.

Speaking some lines with slow, measured syllables and others with rapid, beat-like inflections, Armitage led his audience to laugh at his unexpected images, tap their fingers to the beat of his words, and lean forward to catch his every fading syllable.

“Simon’s poetry behaves characteristically in a very recognizable geography of everyday life,” English Professor W. James Simpson said in introduction. “But they also have the capacity to invest that ordinary experience with mystery, surprise and revelation.”

Armitage read original poems and translations published throughout the span of his career.

“You’re beautiful because you’re classically trained. / I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation,” began one of Armitage’s poems that drew laughter from the listeners.

Another poem, titled “The Shout,” contained the lines “We were testing the range / of the human voice.”

Armitage said that the poem, which recounted a childhood memory in northern England, “has become something of a signature tune.”

“I think it just helps to locate me a little bit, where I’m from, the subjects I write about,” he said of the poem.

Many other poems Armitage chose to read last night drew on his childhood home in northern England.

He said that he can see the area manifest itself through his work.

“I respect and acknowledge the area there, and I can see it now...through the poems,” Armitage said. “Occasionally, people will describe me as a Northern writer. But if it describes what the poem is about, then I take it as a compliment.”

Rachael L. Goldberg ’12 said that Armitage’s reading exposed her to a new experience,

“Reading his poems and hearing him read them were two very different experiences,” she said. “Simon Armitage was amazing, brilliant, and hilarious.”

Armitage is the vice president of the Poetry Society and a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University,

He has been described by Harvard English Professor and leading American poetry critic Helen Vendler as “a narrative poet in lyric dress, or a lyric poet in narrative dress.”

The event was sponsored by the Harvard English Department.

—Staff writer Manning Ding can be reached at ding3@fas.harvard.edu.