Simon Armitage – 30 May

We are delighted to have collaborated with Foxlowe Arts Centre to welcome Poet Laureate Simon Armitage to Leek.

Simon Armitage read from his highly acclaimed 2009 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This story, first told in the late fourteenth century, is one of the most enthralling, enigmatic and beloved poems in the English language.

Armitage’s version is meticulously responsive to the tact, sophistication and dramatic intensity of the original. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscape – physical, allegorical and acoustic – in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true translator.

In 2018, Faber published a new illustrated edition in which the medieval poem’s key episodes have been visualised into a series of bold, richly textured screen-prints by British artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins. There will be a slideshow of these illustrations to accompany the reading.

This presentation was a collaboration between OUTSIDE and Foxlowe Arts Centre, and was part of Leek Loves Books and Leek Arts Festival.

‘I enjoyed it greatly for its kick and music; its high spirits, its many memorable passages. I enjoyed it because, like the Gawain poet, Armitage is some storyteller.’ The Guardian

Ticket booking is now CLOSED.