Simon Armitage. Photo by Richard Moran.
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Simon Armitage, Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid
Originally aired on
Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Celebrated English poet Simon Armitage, who recently provided us with
the spectacular new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
arrives at 192 Books to read from his 2008 volume of poems,
Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid.
This
new book shows Armitage at his best: here is a poet with a fine
ear, who can control both rhythm and sound unobtrusively but exactly,
and with a firm sense of the power of rhyme. Armitage knows that
poetry is the kind of stream in which, as the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus quipped, you cannot stand in the same water twice. In
poetry, what you inherit, you also change: but the inheritance is
real, and has to be earned. The new Armitage is a very grown-up
volume, thoughtful, deeply-informed, able to be in two minds about
things without fudging or faking responses, and capable, therefore,
of speaking intelligently to an intelligent readership.
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