The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right

Simon Armitage

978-1-906613-15-0

£5

Shortlisted for the 2011 Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in Marsden, Yorkshire, and is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

He has published ten collections of poetry including Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (Faber & Faber) and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

His awards include one of the first Forward Prizes, The Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, a Lannan Award, and an Ivor Novello Award for his song-writing in the BAFTA-winning film Feltham Sings.

He is a also a playwright, novelist, regular broadcaster. His most recent prose memoir was, Gig – the Life and Times of a Rock-Star Fantasist (Penguin).

'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

THE ENGLISH ASTRONAUT

He splashed down in rough seas off Spurn Point.
I watched through a coin-op telescope jammed
with a lollipop stick as a trawler fished him out
of the waves and ferried him back to Mission
Control on a trading estate near the Humber
Bridge. He spoke with a mild voice: yes, it was
good to be home; he’d missed his wife, the kids,
couldn’t wait for a shave and a hot bath. ‘Are
there any more questions?’ No, there were not.
I followed him in his Honda Accord to a Little
Chef on the A1, took the table opposite, watched
him order the all-day breakfast and a pot of tea.
‘You need to go outside to do that,’ said the
waitress when he lit a cigarette. He read the
paper, started the crossword, poked at the black
pudding with his fork. Then he stared through
the window for long unbroken minutes at a time,
but only at the busy road, never the sky. And his
face was not the moon. And his hands were not
the hands of a man who had held between finger
and thumb the blue planet, and lifted it up to his
watchmaker’s eye.