The Unaccompanied

Simon Armitage

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780571333868
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

'The most popular English poet since Larkin.' Sunday Times

After more than a decade and following his celebrated adventures in drama, translation, travel writing and prose poetry, Simon Armitage's eleventh collection of poems heralds a return to his trademark contemporary lyricism. The pieces in this multi-textured and moving volume are set against a backdrop of economic recession and social division, where mass media, the mass market and globalisation have made alienation a commonplace experience and where the solitary imagination drifts and conjures.

The Unaccompanied documents a world on the brink, a world of unreliable seasons and unstable coordinates, where Odysseus stalks the aisles of cut-price supermarkets in search of direction, where the star of Bethlehem rises over industrial Yorkshire, and where alarm bells for ailing communities go unheeded or unheard. Looking for certainty the mind gravitates to recollections of upbringing and family, only to encounter more unrecoverable worlds, shaped as ever through Armitage's gifts for clarity and detail as well as his characteristic dead-pan wit. Insightful, relevant and empathetic, these poems confirm The Unaccompanied as a bold new statement of intent by one of our most respected and recognised living poets.

'A writer who has had a game-changing influence on his contemporaries.' Guardian

'Armitage is that rare beast: a poet whose work is ambitious, accomplished and complex as well as popular.' Sunday Telegraph

'The best poet of his generation.' Craig Raine, Observer

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Last Snowman
• The Present
• Nurse at a Bus Stop
• Emergency
• Poundland
• Maundy Thursday
• The Empire
• The Review
• A Bed
• A Chair
• Tractors
• Miniatures
• Gravity
• ‘Tiny’
• Privet
• Prometheus
• Harmonium
• I Kicked a Mushroom
• The Keirin
• Snipe
• The Making of the English Landscape
• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
• The Ice Age
• The Subconscious
• Beach Wedding
• The Unthinkable
• Deor
• To-Do List
• October
• Solitary
• Avalon
• The Claim
• The Holy Land
• Camera Obscura
• Kitchen Window
• Old Boy
• Poor Old Soul
• Portrait of a Maharajah
• The Candlelighter
• The Cinderella of Ferndale
• The Send-Off
• Redwoods
• Glencoe
• Gymnasium
• Violins
• Burrow Mump
• At the Reading, the Poet Introduces His Poem
• The Poet Hosts His Annual Office Christmas Party
• The Kilogram
• Thank You for Waiting
• The Unaccompanied
• Homework
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright