‘Never becoming wise is important’
FROM his West Yorkshire eyrie, you would imagine Simon Armitage carefully guarding his status as a detached poetic observer, seldom lacking warmth in his verse, but an outsider all the same. However, he rejects suggestions that he baulked at accepting a position so smacking of establishment approval as the Poet Laureateship, which dates back to 1668, when Charles II appointed John Dryden.
‘There’s a contradiction that comes with any official role in poetry,’ explains the 21st holder of this honorary title, ‘because although I may have an image of myself operating on the margins looking
