Simon Armitage

Programme Outline

The programme is presented by Simon Armitage. The location is Marsden in Yorkshire where he lives. Armitage introduces, reads and discusses each poem.

Poem 1: 'It Ain't What You Do It's What It Does To You'

Poem 2: '*' ('I am very bothered...')

Poem 3: 'Poem' ('And if it snowed...')

Poem 4: 'About His Person'

The programme is set in and around the West Yorkshire valley west of Huddersfield, in the town of Marsden, where Simon Armitage was born and grew up and close to which he still lives. The first poem, 'It Ain't What You Do It's What It Does To You' ('a personal manifesto as to why I write poetry'), is read by Armitage on a hillside overlooking the town of Marsden. Armitage talks about the poem from a room in his own house. The second poem, '*', which opens with the line 'I am very bothered', is set in one of the chemistry labs at Colne Valley High School where Armitage was himself a pupil. A group of present-day pupils offer their first reactions to the poem and meet Armitage. After a driving sequence that takes in the Pennine moorland forming the boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire - a cultural fault line of great significance in Armitage's imagination - Armitage reads 'Poem' from a taxi in front of a Marsden semi. The final poem, 'About His Person', builds a picture of a suicide victim from the items found on his person. It is read from the mortuary of Huddersfield Royal Infirmary by Armitage, and a small group of mortuary assistants and funeral directors talk about the poem as they perceive it.