Magnetic Field The Marsden Poems

by Simon Armitage

First edition, first printing hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in very good condition. Light shelf wear only, content is as unread. LW

Genres: Poetry

89 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Simon Armitage, whose The Shout was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has published ten volumes of poetry and has received numerous honors for his work. He was appointed UK Poet Laureate in 2019

Armitage's poetry collections include Book of Matches (1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998), a collection of essays on the north of England. He has produced a dramatised version of Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poetry entitled Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize), both of which were published in July 2006. Many of Armitage's poems appear in the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include "Homecoming", "November", "Kid", "Hitcher", and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these "Mother any distance...". His writing is characterised by a dry Yorkshire wit combined with "an accessible, realist style and critical seriousness."

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnetic Field spans 1988-2019 and collects together fifty poems connected to Marsden where Armitage was born. Geography has widened its scope over this period (as a friend, who is a geographer, pointed out to me) and includes many varied areas, including geographical poetics. And that rara avis looks like? Olson's Gloucester, William's Paterson, Hughes's Elmet? Initally, a geographer, Armitage has a clear idea and uses this volume to explore childhood, memory, location, identity, alienation and belonging. In his introduction, Armitage jokes that the Poet Laureate is not Marsden's poet. That is the unknown Samuel Laycock. One large shadow to live under. Another massive shadow is, of course, the first Yorkshire Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes. Having said that, in his poetry I hear Cambridge-Hughes, Cornwall-Hughes, Metaphor-Hughes. Magnetic Field has one outstanding quality: its voice. It is unmistakably that of a poet born in Yorkshire and connected to the North. Armitage has a wonderful eye for the bizarre and an ear for cadence and stress. And is aware of how words have accrued meaning and their effects. Explaining a half-dead ram he conjures "the ammonite, spirograph shells of its horns." Like Heaney, Armitage possesses an archaeological awareness of language. That single image comes up like heather with roots -- Whitby, fossils, spirals of time, childhood games, earth's cornucopia. Hast 'ou seen the rose in the steel dust? Armitage has. A love of words magnetises the whole volume. And that is carried through into the book's conceptualisation: the book opens and closes with an OS map of Marsden and references that locate the geography of each poem. An opening of the field, in a personal manner, that is a joy to read.

[Stephen Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-swellingly lovely collection taken from across Simon Armitages’s career, all written about the village in which he grew up, bookended by maps marking the spots in which the poems are set. No other poet - writing about his childhood, his parents, his family home - gets my synapses firing in quite the same way.

[Mark McKenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of poems based on or around places in Marsden. Particularly loved the intro in which Simon shows where he grew up. I’ve always wondered where, not knowing I’ve walked past it loads of times!

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection of poems set in and around Marsden where Simon Armitage grew up. A mix of styles and forms, as you'd expect, from formal to free, and some genuine stop me in my tracks moments.

[Catherine Minnis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a joy to have a Yorkshire poet laureate (again) and I've been lucky enough to meet him twice. His poems are always so evocative of time and place.

[Russio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some more enigmatic older poems suddenly clicked into place for me when I read this geo specific collection of SA's collection of both old and new verse. I expected a pastoral but this was way more eclectic and the themes are grand and diverse. There are some obvious choices here: The Shout, for example, as well as some avant garde prose poems, including one about Bowie. What struck me is how people these poems were: to SA a landscape seems to be teeming with thoughts of others, unlike, say Hughes, who rendered the natural world as a more arid and person-devoid landscape. Great stuff, as per norm.

[Mark Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminded me why I like and have always liked Simon Armitage's poetry, not that I really needed reminding, an anthology really of poems based on or linked to his home, with a few new ones, interesting idea to collate these poems in one book but not done chronologically.Anyway , I really enjoyed his Marsden window on the world.At his best I think in the day to day minutiae of life.Recommended, particularly if you are new to his work.

[Claire Milne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking for a book of poems for our wee book group my friend and I decided on Simon Armitage and this collection specifically. I have just finished reading through it for the first time and I plan to read it again before we meet. It is a lovely collection of poems that gives an insight into where the post grew up and if I were asked to choose a favourite there would be a number I would struggle to decide between. A book I will easily keep going back to.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the ones i am familiar with but need to read the others and think them through now.

[Peter Longden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous collection of poems focused on his home from the Yorkshire-centric poet! As a fellow Yorkshireman, exiled as I am, this is a delightful way to spend a little time breathing the north Pennine air. It is a personal, atmospheric, humorous, emotional and sensitive collection that shows his love of the place, how it has changed and the way people react with it and it interacts with people.
‘The Shout’ is visually mesmerising the voice of ‘the shout’ brought to life by the places he stands in with the shock of the ending in loud silence.
It may feel like an obsession but anyone, like him and myself, who feel they have a natural affinity with a place will find themselves drifting back there in reality nor creativity to recapture its essence.
I empathise with him over the sensations his recollections engender. His poem 'Privet,' reminds me of the punishing routine of arduous pruning required to keep such vegetation in check, yes, to make up for some misdemeanour, but remember the euphoria of a tidy hedge and sacks full of cuttings thrown on the local tip; my own son helped me with a hedge and ended with his young body ‘surfing’ on the bush, ‘floating there, cushioned and buoyed by a million matchwood fingertips.’ My parents could be the subjects of the text, our own working-class testimony with some of my own fond memories recalled by his mother, as I had helped hundreds of times:
          at the twin-tub, 
          manhandling shirts, 
          hauling drowning sailors 
          from sea to deck.
Too many to highlight, this is a beautiful tribute to the beauty of a rural Yorkshire hometown generously shared by a master poet.

[Readiverse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about the writer’s beloved Marsden, where he grew up and decided to become a poet after returning there after university. I’m always struck by a good poet’s ability to turn the ordinarily banal and mundane into something worth reading; this was especially evident in a poem in this collection written about a tyre becoming submerged in waterlogged soil. Other poems covered deeper topics such as the bond between father and son (‘every son carries a key on a chain around his neck’) and other important figures such as his wife. The note of sombreness continued in a poem that described the creeping build up of new houses on a green land. Some were less serious but helped evoke a real sense of rural Marsden life, the case in point here being a poem about removing a dead ram from the road after stamping on its neck to conclude its misery. Overall, I found it fun to immerse myself into the sights and sounds of another world and I was reminded of how language in this form can be soothing and therapeutic to read.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of poems I liked, but also quite a few ones I found difficult to engage with. Armitage is impressively experimental- there's a mix of prose poems, character monologues, landscape pieces and more opaque playing with language. The hit rate is pretty impressive, and there is a political seam to the collection which elevates it: I'm thinking of the bitter letter to poverty To Poverty, and the description of the post-industrial landscape of Britain as an unattended 'Emergency'.

Poems I liked:

Privet, Ice, Mother any distance greater than a single span, To Poverty, The Two of Us, Evening, Emergency, Snow

[Larry Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gem with a revealing introduction on sense of place, his and others. Definitely mine as a fellow working class youth from a small town, his in the UK, mine in Ohio. The poems are all set in his hometown of Marsden and presented in a memoir sequencing. It holds as it deepens our senses and sense significance in small things and acts. *Tip You can find him reading many if the poems in their locales on YouTube.
Simon Armitage is a fine wordsmith and person.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a nice collection of geographically linked poems. Some of these are very powerful reflections on home and belonging. Others I could take or leave. It's a beautifully produced volume. All in all, an uplifting January read.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each time I read Simon Armitage's poems, a new layer of meaning is revealed. I never tire of them.

"A poem is like a spring, which only trickles forth long after the rain has fallen.' (Johann
Sigurjonsson)

[S.M. Jenkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So specific to Marsden, with photos, maps and a beautiful sense of the fragility and tenderness of a place mapped out.

[Stefan Grieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great poems of good quality about the writers home town.

[Liv Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights:

- The Two of Us
- A New Career in a New Town
- Privet
- To Poverty

[Leilani]

DNF

[Rokkan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In turns maudlin and whimsical. Not as depressing as Philip Larkin, but still there are some melancholic poems in here.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved these poems:

The Serpent Holder: A funny ditty in dialect.

The Chisel

Privet

To Poverty: a cleverly crafted poem addressed to poverty.

The Two of Us: Poem on rich verse poor and how the worm cant tell them apart.

Snow

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection, British poet laureate Simon Armitage accumulates the poems he has written over the course of his career about, set in or inspired by the village he grew up in in northern England.

The book reads like the greatest hits of a master of his craft, and to me, highlights the Englishness of the poet like no other book he has written. Marked with texture and colour, like the patterned wallpaper in your grandad’s house, the poems highlighted here come across as rich and warm, a comforting refuge from the bleakness on its periphery. In this, they seem to me emblematic of the particular time and place of his upbringing in a small English village tucked up against the barren moors of the southern Pennines.

Not to say that this collection is one dimensional in any way. Armitage keeps lots of surprises up his sleeve to keep readers turning the page, and the unique quality of his voice, and originality of his verse alone makes this collection very much worthwhile.

Finally, a mention must be made of the book design itself, which is simply beautiful. Interspersed throughout the pages are pictures of the village taken by the author. And most interestingly, the somewhat restricted nature of the geography of these poems is given an additional and quite unique dimension in the inner covers, where hand drawn maps of the village are annotated with page references to poems set in those spots. Unsurprisingly, the childhood home comes out with the highest score.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

lovely signed edition picked up at Salts Mill bookshop. The poems concerning his birthplace, mapped out on the endpapers.