Latest news with #SimonArmitage
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The centre looking at freedom, tolerance and the Holocaust through north London eyes
A nationwide arts project looking at freedom during the Second World War compared to freedom we enjoy today — eight decades on — starts at Hampstead's JW3 cultural centre next month. It involves 60 arts centres and libraries all over the UK marking the 80th anniversary of the war ending in 1945. JW3 is the only faith centre among the 60 venues chosen by the Arts Council to take part, backed by the Government. Each venue takes a different aspect of 'Freedom then and now' with JW3 looking at the impact of the Holocaust down the generations. Organisers are looking for people for the project aged 18 to 35 to create artwork inspired by a family member or someone affected by the Holocaust or a story that resonates with them. Those taking part would choose their own art medium such as film, spoken word, digital, recording, photography, painting or poetry. 'Poetry is a form of freedom like all art,' the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage says. 'It is the right to say what we want, where and whenever we like. 'Freedom makes art possible to exist — but most noticeable when it's under threat, which is a warning against taking it for granted.' Freedom, Armitage argues, requires 'a live-and-let-live neighbourly tolerance'. Anyone joining the nine sessions at JW3 would be guided by professional artists like poet and theatre maker Adam Kammerling. Two sessions are at a professional recording studio, to learn how to do a podcast with a production company to bring the project to a wider audience. All the work goes on show in a public exhibition opening November 23 at JW3 in Finchley Road. The nationwide project explores the legacy of VE Day and VJ Day with all 60 venues 'building Britain's cultural fabric', each taking on a different aspect. The theme at JW3 is what the Holocaust means to younger generations, looking back to the time when six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis in German occupied Europe. The industrialised, state-orchestrated genocide was the worst in human history, murdering a third of the world's total Jewish population. A handful of Holocaust survivors now in their 80s, 90s and older live today in north London. Heading up the JW3 end of the project is Thamar Barnett, who said: 'The impact of the Holocaust continues to echo across generations — not just remembrance but in the resilience and dignity of those who survived it. 'We are exploring the meaning of freedom, its fragile nature and its power.' The evening sessions include 'research' on September 1 and 8, on 'making art' September 15, 29, October 20 and 27, on 'podcast recording' November 3 and 10 and on 'launching the exhibition' November 23, all starting 6.30pm. The project defines what freedom means and the role of 'safe public spaces' like JW3. It is a journey of discovery for like-minded young people wanting to make a difference in today's world and seeing the past from a new perspective.
Channel 4
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Channel 4
The poet laureate and the lost villages of Durham's coalfield
When mining communities in County Durham were put in Category D status back in the 1950s – it spelled an end to any future economic development, with a third of villages declared no longer viable. That D came to stand not just for decline, but also disappearance as local people were forced to leave their homes and some villages were demolished. But the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage and his band have been reviving their memories in song with a performance in County Durham.
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Nest Box by Simon Armitage
Nest Box When the drunken old fool saw the barn owl, he swore blind it was an angel. 'Half-human, half-eagle,' he told someone in the town square. 'White flames in mid-air, a ghost with wings,' he crowed to the gathering crowd. 'A weird presence that materialised out of the heavens,' he said to the scrum of reporters before he keeled over. They searched the meadow and heath but found only pellets of small bones and teeth and skulls and part-digested fur and knotted hair. Which was strange, because when the young girl saw the angel she swore blind it was a barn owl, but when birdwatchers went to the copse and looked in the nest box they found tinselly silver threads and luminous turds and a warm meteorite and a few feathers made only of light. Nest Box is from Simon Armitage's Dwell, a slim hardback collection illustrated by the talented Cornish artist and printmaker, Beth Munro. The briefly titled poems, such as Drey, Den, Hibernaculum and Insect Hotel, focus on the safe places, natural or devised, inhabited by the wildlife of the restored Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. Eventually, we're told, the poems will be 'manifested physically at site-specific locations and in different guises' – as installations, treasure-trails, sculptures and so on. Dwell, therefore, is an illustrated print preview, an informal, engaging, often humorous short collection that will appeal to younger readers, and occasional readers, and sharpen every reader's ecological conscience. The Lost Gardens project, today and in its future planned restorations, has supreme ecological significance, as Dwell makes clear. It's a story with major historical-political dimensions, too, concerning class, regionalism, and the first world war. I'm already speculating, and hoping, that a full-length collection might emerge later from the poet laureate's heartfelt engagement with the 'Willow Garden' (as its Cornish name translates). It is rich material. While the poems in Dwell are simultaneously grounded and freely imaginative, Nest Box addresses more fundamental questions about what we define as real. It reminded me, on a first reading, of similar questions raised by one of my favourite children's books, Skellig, by David Almond. There, the eponymous protagonist might almost be any homeless man, but, as he eventually admits to the children who have helped rescue him, he's really 'something combining aspects of human, owl and angel'. Almond acknowledges the influence of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, usually classified as magic realism. Armitage's poem is more oblique: not contained easily in any genre box, it's essentially concerned with questioning the human response to natural phenomena, and asking how we can provide 'evidence' to challenge our possible illusions. There is an ecological force to the inquiry: humans need some enchantment to draw them into a less than self-centred concern with the environment, but we need to know what we see when we see 'nature', to best be able to preserve it. It's a big question for ecopoets, too. Nest Box begins when the 'drunken old fool' (or supposed one) swears 'blind' that he saw an angel in the sky. He burbles a riff of conflicting images: 'half-human, half eagle', 'white flames in mid-air // a ghost with wings'. The reporters investigating the story, after the man has 'keeled over', search for evidence, but find only the remains of an owl's last meal. Armitage's narrative, casual but determinedly objective, pursues the qualifications of rhetorical argument, the 'strange' and the 'but then'… A second observer, a young girl, swears her own sighting to have been a barn owl. But are the two visions incompatible? The evidence for the sighting of the angel consists of the remains of small mammals ('pellets of small bones and teeth, // and skulls, and part-digested fur / and knotted hair'). The evidence for the barn owl is pursued by birdwatchers, a breed of narrator we'd expect to be less unreliable than reporters. They check the nest box and find a mysterious, mixed assemblage: 'tinselly silver threads / and luminous turds // and a warm meteorite / and a few feathers made only of light.' Are the angel and the owl sharing the nest box by any chance? There are lively if not unpredictable 'turns' as Armitage's fast-moving, rhymed and half-rhymed couplets unroll, blending journalese and lyric tones. No adjudication is imposed: ultimately, the evidence for the nest box angel may be as unreliable as the old drunk's sighting of the creature itself. The young and not-so-young reader's imaginative intelligence is well-nourished. What evidence, we wonder, would show that an angel had used a nest-box meant for an owl? What is an angel? What is this one like? It's clearly not a grumpy old man with wings, and not as grand and strange as what was seen by the 'drunken old fool', either. It's an angel the size of a barn-owl, or smaller. Should we think of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica? Perhaps it's not any traditional kind of angel, but, in view of the 'warm meteorite', not essentially supernatural. The muscles of ratiocination and imagination need to be continually exercised by us earth-dwellers, not least because life-forms on planets other than ours are almost certain to be discovered one day soon. Armitage's 'Welcome Note' to Dwell is relevant to Nest Box. He describes how his grandparents fought to guard the eaves of their proudly well-maintained council house against messy nesting house martins. 'This kind of inhospitality,' Armitage writes, 'has increased in direct proportion to soaring human populations, and the consequence of homelessness for most living things is extinction. House martins are now a red-listed bird.' It's something to bear in mind as we enjoy the magic and humour of the angel-owl but ponder the last traces of its residency in the well-meant nest box. Dwell by Simon Armitage, illustrated by Beth Munro, is published by Faber & Faber, priced £10. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Nest Box by Simon Armitage
Nest Box When the drunken old fool saw the barn owl, he swore blind it was an angel. 'Half-human, half-eagle,' he told someone in the town square. 'White flames in mid-air, a ghost with wings,' he crowed to the gathering crowd. 'A weird presence that materialised out of the heavens,' he said to the scrum of reporters before he keeled over. They searched the meadow and heath but found only pellets of small bones and teeth and skulls and part-digested fur and knotted hair. Which was strange, because when the young girl saw the angel she swore blind it was a barn owl, but when birdwatchers went to the copse and looked in the nest box they found tinselly silver threads and luminous turds and a warm meteorite and a few feathers made only of light. Nest Box is from Simon Armitage's Dwell, a slim hardback collection illustrated by the talented Cornish artist and printmaker, Beth Munro. The briefly titled poems, such as Drey, Den, Hibernaculum and Insect Hotel, focus on the safe places, natural or devised, inhabited by the wildlife of the restored Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. Eventually, we're told, the poems will be 'manifested physically at site-specific locations and in different guises' – as installations, treasure-trails, sculptures and so on. Dwell, therefore, is an illustrated print preview, an informal, engaging, often humorous short collection that will appeal to younger readers, and occasional readers, and sharpen every reader's ecological conscience. The Lost Gardens project, today and in its future planned restorations, has supreme ecological significance, as Dwell makes clear. It's a story with major historical-political dimensions, too, concerning class, regionalism, and the first world war. I'm already speculating, and hoping, that a full-length collection might emerge later from the poet laureate's heartfelt engagement with the 'Willow Garden' (as its Cornish name translates). It is rich material. While the poems in Dwell are simultaneously grounded and freely imaginative, Nest Box addresses more fundamental questions about what we define as real. It reminded me, on a first reading, of similar questions raised by one of my favourite children's books, Skellig, by David Almond. There, the eponymous protagonist might almost be any homeless man, but, as he eventually admits to the children who have helped rescue him, he's really 'something combining aspects of human, owl and angel'. Almond acknowledges the influence of a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, usually classified as magic realism. Armitage's poem is more oblique: not contained easily in any genre box, it's essentially concerned with questioning the human response to natural phenomena, and asking how we can provide 'evidence' to challenge our possible illusions. There is an ecological force to the inquiry: humans need some enchantment to draw them into a less than self-centred concern with the environment, but we need to know what we see when we see 'nature', to best be able to preserve it. It's a big question for ecopoets, too. Nest Box begins when the 'drunken old fool' (or supposed one) swears 'blind' that he saw an angel in the sky. He burbles a riff of conflicting images: 'half-human, half eagle', 'white flames in mid-air // a ghost with wings'. The reporters investigating the story, after the man has 'keeled over', search for evidence, but find only the remains of an owl's last meal. Armitage's narrative, casual but determinedly objective, pursues the qualifications of rhetorical argument, the 'strange' and the 'but then'… A second observer, a young girl, swears her own sighting to have been a barn owl. But are the two visions incompatible? The evidence for the sighting of the angel consists of the remains of small mammals ('pellets of small bones and teeth, // and skulls, and part-digested fur / and knotted hair'). The evidence for the barn owl is pursued by birdwatchers, a breed of narrator we'd expect to be less unreliable than reporters. They check the nest box and find a mysterious, mixed assemblage: 'tinselly silver threads / and luminous turds // and a warm meteorite / and a few feathers made only of light.' Are the angel and the owl sharing the nest box by any chance? There are lively if not unpredictable 'turns' as Armitage's fast-moving, rhymed and half-rhymed couplets unroll, blending journalese and lyric tones. No adjudication is imposed: ultimately, the evidence for the nest box angel may be as unreliable as the old drunk's sighting of the creature itself. The young and not-so-young reader's imaginative intelligence is well-nourished. What evidence, we wonder, would show that an angel had used a nest-box meant for an owl? What is an angel? What is this one like? It's clearly not a grumpy old man with wings, and not as grand and strange as what was seen by the 'drunken old fool', either. It's an angel the size of a barn-owl, or smaller. Should we think of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica? Perhaps it's not any traditional kind of angel, but, in view of the 'warm meteorite', not essentially supernatural. The muscles of ratiocination and imagination need to be continually exercised by us earth-dwellers, not least because life-forms on planets other than ours are almost certain to be discovered one day soon. Armitage's 'Welcome Note' to Dwell is relevant to Nest Box. He describes how his grandparents fought to guard the eaves of their proudly well-maintained council house against messy nesting house martins. 'This kind of inhospitality,' Armitage writes, 'has increased in direct proportion to soaring human populations, and the consequence of homelessness for most living things is extinction. House martins are now a red-listed bird.' It's something to bear in mind as we enjoy the magic and humour of the angel-owl but ponder the last traces of its residency in the well-meant nest box. Dwell by Simon Armitage, illustrated by Beth Munro, is published by Faber & Faber, priced £10. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
BBC News
12-05-2025
- BBC News
Weaver Network unveiled as 'new era' for West Yorkshire public transport
West Yorkshire transport bosses have unveiled new branding for the region's public transport network, pledging a "bold new area".The Weaver Network was launched by Mayor Tracy Brabin and West Yorkshire council leaders at Millennium Square in West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) said the single branding across the network would make it "easier and more accessible" for previous Metro logo - a large 'M' - has been in place since 1974. Ms Brabin said the region had suffered from a "disjointed, confusing and increasingly hard-to-navigate public transport system" for too new Weaver Network was "a fresh, modern identity", she name was inspired by the region's industrial past, WYCA said, and "visually reflects the cultural fabric of modern-day West Yorkshire".The rebrand follows "extensive work" to explore the area's cultural Laureate Simon Armitage, who helped devise the new brand, said: "I'm West Yorkshire born and bred, a public transport user, a geography graduate and a poet - in many ways it was the perfect invitation."To me, the Weaver Network name symbolises the threads connecting people with places, shuttling to and fro, built on heritage and creating new ties and links." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
