The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in Its Own Right

by Simon Armitage

SORTLISTED FOR THE 2010 MICHAEL MARKS AWARD The latest poems from one of the UK's finest authors. Returning to the pamphlet form, and the pamphlet publisher, which first launched Simon Armitage s remarkable career the variety in this collection almost feels like a lap of honour. Quietly ironised monologues, flashes of startlingly apt imagery, and a dry but never arid sense of humour are typical of the poems in The Motorway Service Station.' The British Library "The front man of his generation... The most imaginative and prolific poet now writing." Poetry Review "Armitage's skill is to reach beyond the prosaic for deeper mysteries... (he) speaks with an utter lack of sentimentality or pomposity of the transcendent mysteries that lie beyond the ordinary moment." The Times

Genres: Poetry

24 pages, Pamphlet

First published January 1, 2009

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

[Russio · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable collet on of 12 short poems, mostly circling loneliness as a topic. The strongest to my mind is that which includes the title's collection, it being used as a final line which really punches you in the guts.

Others remain more enigmatic and will need to brew for longer.