The former laureate praises the appointment of Armitage, who will make the most of a role that has become less about ‘royal stuff’ and more about the poetry of everyday life
The news that Simon Armitage is the new poet laureate is both good for him and good for poetry. I’ve known Simon almost since he began to publish poems. He is a particularly brilliant choice for the post in that he has always had the remarkable capacity to take on whatever he encounters in the world, and then to fashion it into very good poetry. Most poets, no matter how good they are, have special areas of subject interest. By contrast Simon has an octopus-armed ability to grapple with almost anything and everything that comes his way and to see what is poetic about it. This facility has something to do with his technical skills, which are formidable. But it is as much to do with the way that he finds everything in the world interesting. More specifically in a poetical sense, the way he finds everything in the world worth wondering about. His poems are full of ideas and attitudes, but the primary impulse of his work is to express wonder about the world in its multiple forms.
The position entails a lot of getting up early to go on the Today programme – Simon will be extremely good at all that
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