Overview

The conversion of a local natural-beauty spot into a municipal graveyard is the starting point for New Cemetery. From regular walks around the boundary near his moorland home in West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage chronicles the extraordinary transformation of landscape both outer and inner. These luminous and wry poems - composed in short-lined tercets - reflect the changing world: one of unstable weather patterns and unpredictable news events, all observed across a few acres of Pennine upland. As seasons come and go and the cemetery fills up with new 'residents', Armitage charts personal losses of his own, often retreating to his garden shed to navigate blank paper with pen and ink. Encompassing lyrical revelations and everyday vignettes alongside apocalyptic visions and imagined conversations with the deceased, these pages draw us into a parallel neighbourhood of remembrance and celebration.

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Reviews

'Armitage's work continues the rich tradition of British nature poetry . . . [His] approach makes his poetry accessible and fosters a deeper emotional connection with the reader.' - Sam Illingworth, The Conversation

Author Information

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His award-winning collections include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Magnetic Field (2020), Blossomise (2023) and Dwell (2025). Simon Armitage is Poet Laureate.

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