theartsdesk Q&A: poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelands

THEARTSDESK Q&A: Poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelands

Interview with the Yorkshire-born poet ahead of his appearance on The South Bank Show

Simon Armitage is a poet at the top of his game: in his second year as poet laureate, he has given voice to the experiences of lockdown. In March, he released his collection Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems, a return to the childhood village in West Yorkshire that has served as his lifetime inspiration.

Album: Charles Webster - Decision Time

★★★★★ CHARLES WEBSTER - DECISION TIME An extraordinary comeback

An extraordinary comeback - and hopefully overdue recognition - for a British underground music legend

Charles Webster is one of those connecting figures who make the idea of “the underground” seem quite convincing. Originally from the Peak District but coming of musical age in Nottingham, he was inspired by Chicago house and Detroit techno music from their very genesis in the mid 1980s, and went on to make some of the finest British house music ever.  

Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche

 ★★★★★ WAYNE HOLLOWAY-SMITH: LOVE MINUS LOVE Painful and heartfelt poems set against a history of personal tragedy

Painful and heartfelt poems set against a history of personal tragedy

Roughly two years since the posh mums are boxing in the square scooped first place in the 2018 National Poetry Competition, Wayne Holloway-Smith returns with Love Minus Love, his second full-length collection.

EP: Imelda May - Slip of the Tongue

★★★★★ IMELDA MAY - SLIP OF THE TONGUE Spirited poems from Irish rockabilly queen

Spirited poems from Irish rockabilly queen

Dublin’s Imelda May, who made her name as a superlative performer of high-energy rockabilly in a way that reflected the music’s partly Irish roots, has just released her first poetry recordings: nine punchy, moving, sometimes humourous and well-crafted spoken lyrics, mostly accompanied by subtle yet atmospheric strings.

The Songs of Coronavirus and Lockdown Life

THE SONGS OF CORONAVIRUS AND LOCKDOWN LIFE The pandemic has given a worldwide cross section of quarantined musicians plenty to write about

The pandemic has given a worldwide cross section of quarantined musicians plenty to write about

At the start of March an obscure alt-metal outfit called Cegvera released a concept album titled The Sixth Glare. The physical album featured the headline “DISEASE” alongside a photograph of a woman in a protective facemask, and the sleeve notes expand on the idea that, if we don’t tend to our environment, an illness will arrive to which the world doesn’t have immunity. It opens with a cut called “Infection”. Looked at now, it’s bizarrely prescient.

'What Grandma said (Grandma’s Corona)': sonnets by Claudia Daventry

WHAT GRANDMA SAID (GRANDMA'S CORONA) Sonnets by award-winning poet Claudia Daventry

The award-winning poet introduces her timely sequence mapping out all we have lost

A year plagued by Coronavirus is surely a time to dust off a seldom-aired poetic form, the Corona of sonnets, which was first dreamed up – officially, anyway – by the Siena Academy. John Donne used the form to illustrate the circularity of existence and our connection with a creator, later expressed – in poetry – in Eliot's "in my end is my beginning".