Simon Armitage's musical beat

Sep 24 2008 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Marsden born writer and broadcaster Simon Armitage will be a star speaker at the Huddersfield Examiner’s Literary Luncheon at the Galpharm Stadium on October 7. He spoke to VAL JAVIN

“I started the music stuff as a bit of a hobby but it’s opened up lots of different areas of work for me’

IT COULD so easily have been a book with crown green bowling at its heart.

But Simon Armitage’s latest volume, Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist beats instead to the rhythm of one of the passions in Simon’s life – music.

The Marsden-born writer and broadcaster will be a star speaker at the Huddersfield Examiner’s Literary Luncheon at the Galpharm Stadium on October 7. And his secret life as a rock star – and as a crown green bowler – might just be revealed!

“It’s had a very strange history this book. I looked back at the contract for it and I was going to write a book about family history on the same scale as All Points North exploring the degree to which I am northern.”

But when he sat down to write it, Simon decided that it wasn’t something that he was ready to do. “I did think, I can’t make this interesting.”

“I then decided that it was going to be a book on crown green bowling which I was playing a lot of with my dad.

“I played a bit of cricket with my dad when he was towards the end of his playing career. I didn’t think that I would play competitive sport with him again.”

“To play sport with him again is really nice. It’s a way of extending that time with him,” said Simon.

Sadly, because of other commitments, Simon’s appearances on the green have been rare this year, but he hopes to play at least another season alongside his dad.

As for the spirit of crown green bowling forming the heart of a book, well that idea didn’t quite pan out either for when Simon started writing a journal, he found his thoughts dominated by another subject entirely.

“I realised quickly that what I was writing about was mainly music.” And the result was Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist, a follow-up to the best-selling All Points North, and a glimpse into the world of an obsessive music fan.

There’s a sense of inevitability about Simon adding a music inspired book to his astonishing, ever widening output. After all when he and a mate Craig Smith created the band they always thought they might, who became the lyric writer (and sometime vocalist) for The Scaremongers? Simon.

“I started the music stuff as a bit of a hobby but it’s opened up lots of different areas of work for me. I’ve started doing this column in the Observer on vinyl.”

And when we chat, it turns out he’s just back from London’s Grosvenor Hotel where he was doing a TV slot on the Mercury music awards – and having a great time. “ I don’t know what it was like backstage. I was doing the TV stuff and it was a really good night.”

It may not have been intentional but by airing his passion for music, Simon has widened still further the areas in which he can work.

“There was no career objective or anything like that but it’s not untypical of how things work for me.

“The poems are the shop window but people often come in and want something else. I like that.”

And poetry is not something he feels the urge to sit down and grapple with each day.

“You can’t discipline yourself to be a poet and write them every day. It’s a much more occasional thing. Once you’re involved with writing, there’s a much more general urge to write other things.”

After four or five years of constant commissions, Simon intended to take time out this summer to consider more carefully what he wanted to do.

But that doesn’t seem to have stopped him working or making major decisions.

“I’ve just signed up to do The Death Of Arthur which will probably take me three years.”

It follows the huge success, on both sides of the Atlantic, of Simon’s verse translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The theatre rights to the Sir Gawain translation were bought by New Perspectives Theatre Company and the world premiere production of their stage version opens at the Lawrence Batley Theatre on October 23.

“I’ve not seen the production. I’m going down to Nottingham just before it opens in Huddersfield to see their technical run through. I said I would help with publicity for it but I want to see it first. I’ve no idea what they’ve done.

“They’ve put together a huge tour of about 50 dates. There are regular theatres like the LBT but there are doing schools and village halls as well. It’s part of the ethos of Gawain.”

As to tackling a stage version himself, Simon has no hesitation.

“I wasn’t tempted to do it myself. I love it so much as a poem. I don’t think that I would have been able to present something beyond that. I don’t think that I would have had it in me to do that.

“I think these things are best left to people in theatre. Also I think there’s a danger about exhuming work once you’ve done it. Creatively I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go back.”

“I put so much into it. I think it must have been three years in the end. This next piece is twice as long but I’m more conversant with the original language now. I’m pretty fluent with the tone and the rhythm. It’s not daunting this time, I was starting off last time like Gawain on a journey where I didn’t know whether it had an ending.”

It was a journey which did in fact end in critical acclaim and huge personal satisfaction for Simon. Little wonder that he relishes a new journey with Arthur.

But he’s also got a clutch of other projects in hand. There’s a suggestion of a contract for a new non-fiction book plus the transmission some time next year of a film with Brian Hill and Century Films for which Simon has written poetry.

What started out as a film of concerts held across the world under the Live Earth banner has become much more a piece about environmental issues worldwide.

“I’ve written some poetry to go with it. We just need somebody to do the poem. Ian McKellen was going to do it but he’s filming in Nambia for The Prisoner.”

Opportunities, challenges. They are constants in Simon’s life and he seems ready to cope with them all. Hear what Simon has to say about his new book and about his writer’s life at this year Literary Luncheon on October 7.

Tickets for the three course lunch at which Simon will head a list of five major speakers from the literary world, are £25. A limited number are still available at our reception in Queen Street South, Huddersfield.