Desert Island Discs Revisited: Poet Castaways - Simon Armitage

DESERT ISLAND DISCS REVISITED: POET CASTAWAYS - SIMON ARMITAGE (320kbs-m4a/98mb/42mins)
BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast: 6th October 2024

Appointed Poet Laureate in 2019 - Simon Armitage is castaway by Lauren Laverne.

His poems celebrate the everyday and the ordinary with wit and affection. But beyond the wood chip and washing lines he addresses the complexities and the profound feelings that underpin daily life.

Born in Huddersfield, Simon Armitage grew up in the village of Marsden in West Yorkshire. Marsden has informed and inspired much of his work and as a boy he would look out of his bedroom window at night to watch the comings and goings of village life.

He vividly remembers as a teenager discovering the work of fellow laureate Ted Hughes, recalling an almost electrical surge of excitement when he realised the power of words on a page. Hughes grew up in the next valley and Simon admits to thinking "If Ted Hughes can do it why can't I?"

He worked as a probation officer in Manchester for several years, writing poetry in the evenings and at weekends. His first collection Zoom! was published in 1989 and a few years later he left the probation service to write full time.

Prolific and popular, he was named the Millennium poet and in 2015 was appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. Three years later he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Today he lives not far from Marsden where, when he's not writing poems, plays and novels, he still looks out of his window and daydreams.

BOOK CHOICE: The Oxford English Dictionary
LUXURY ITEM: A tennis ball
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Moonage Daydream by David Bowie

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2020.

David Bowie - Moonage Daydream
The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge - The Lamb by William Blake, composed by John Tavener, conducted by Andrew Nethsingha
Jonathan Pryce and the 1994 London Palladium Cast Of Oliver! - You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two
Ted Hughes - Icecrust and Snowflake
Joy Division - Atmosphere
Soft Cell - Tainted Love / Where Did Our Love Go?
Jon Rennard - Holmfirth Anthem
Else Torpe and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent - My Heart's In The Highlands