I am a Ghost
New Member
From the "Uncut" magazine's online newsletter.
Anyway, I mention all this because when I get to the Latitude Festival this year, one of the very first things I'm going to do is check out the Literary and Poetry Arenas to see when Simon Armitage is appearing, because I really don't want to miss him.
Armitage is a poet. I know the name, but I'm not familiar with his verse. We have a fan in the Uncut office, however, in the shape of Michael Bonner - who even as I write is enjoying a mid-afternoon break, sitting at his desk, adjusting his cravat and leafing through a vellum-bound copy of something by Swinburne - who tells me that Armitage is indeed a poet to be admired.
I'll take his word for it and I'm sure if Armitage turns up at Latitude and does nothing more than read a selection from his collected works, it will be good enough for many.
I'll be hoping, though, that he'll be reading from and talking about his newly-published memoir, Gig - The Life And Times Of A Rock-Star Fantasist, which over the weekend has had me hooting like something raucous you might hear in a tropical rainforest.
Gig is loosely an autobiography - or scraps, at least, of one - centred around the author's love of music and his occasional yearning to be himself in the rock'n'roll spotlight that charts his various infatuations and obsessions. He's fleetingly brilliant on diverse fronts - David Bowie, The Fall, Joy Division, Comsat Angels, Felt, Arctic Monkeys - but a couple of things from Gig deserve special mention.
The chapter, for a start on Morrissey - "with his waiter's hips and builder's shoulders" - at King George's Hall, Blackburn in May 2006 is a gem.
Morrissey has just whipped off his shirt. "I'm staring at his stomach," Armitage writes. "It isn't the toned and shaped and personally trained stomach of a Los Angeles resident. Neither is it the pie-and-chips pregnancy of the shirtless car-park attendant on an August bank holiday, or the space-hopper beer belly of the Newcastle United fan, stripped to the waist and standing on his seat in a howling north-easterly at St James' Park on New Year's Day."
"So what is it? It's sort of proud, sort of serious. It's very real. Back in the eighties, there was barely enough of Morrissey to stop his paisley shorts and floral blouses from completely imploding. Now he looks like a retired shire horse standing on its back legs, or something from mythology, as if those tailored Italian trousers might be hiding a pair of goat's legs."
Anyway, I mention all this because when I get to the Latitude Festival this year, one of the very first things I'm going to do is check out the Literary and Poetry Arenas to see when Simon Armitage is appearing, because I really don't want to miss him.
Armitage is a poet. I know the name, but I'm not familiar with his verse. We have a fan in the Uncut office, however, in the shape of Michael Bonner - who even as I write is enjoying a mid-afternoon break, sitting at his desk, adjusting his cravat and leafing through a vellum-bound copy of something by Swinburne - who tells me that Armitage is indeed a poet to be admired.
I'll take his word for it and I'm sure if Armitage turns up at Latitude and does nothing more than read a selection from his collected works, it will be good enough for many.
I'll be hoping, though, that he'll be reading from and talking about his newly-published memoir, Gig - The Life And Times Of A Rock-Star Fantasist, which over the weekend has had me hooting like something raucous you might hear in a tropical rainforest.
Gig is loosely an autobiography - or scraps, at least, of one - centred around the author's love of music and his occasional yearning to be himself in the rock'n'roll spotlight that charts his various infatuations and obsessions. He's fleetingly brilliant on diverse fronts - David Bowie, The Fall, Joy Division, Comsat Angels, Felt, Arctic Monkeys - but a couple of things from Gig deserve special mention.
The chapter, for a start on Morrissey - "with his waiter's hips and builder's shoulders" - at King George's Hall, Blackburn in May 2006 is a gem.
Morrissey has just whipped off his shirt. "I'm staring at his stomach," Armitage writes. "It isn't the toned and shaped and personally trained stomach of a Los Angeles resident. Neither is it the pie-and-chips pregnancy of the shirtless car-park attendant on an August bank holiday, or the space-hopper beer belly of the Newcastle United fan, stripped to the waist and standing on his seat in a howling north-easterly at St James' Park on New Year's Day."
"So what is it? It's sort of proud, sort of serious. It's very real. Back in the eighties, there was barely enough of Morrissey to stop his paisley shorts and floral blouses from completely imploding. Now he looks like a retired shire horse standing on its back legs, or something from mythology, as if those tailored Italian trousers might be hiding a pair of goat's legs."
