The Unaccompanied by Simon Armitage

The Unaccompanied Reviews

• 
  Erin-Elizabeth

  A quite stark and dark collection of poetry featuring a critique of modern life and austerity. I do enjoy a collection of poetry every so often and I actually chose this Armitage collection to teach to my yr 13 class for their exams but I (and they) found it very heavy going. There are some real brilliant poems here: Thank you for waiting, Gymnasium, The Present, The Poet Hosts His Annual Office Christmas Party, Kitchen Window, Poor Old Soul, Nurse at a Bus Stop and Poundland. All of the aforementioned are well written, some humorous, some touching and some with undeniable truths. Some others in the collection, however, just did nothing for me and I found myself scratching around for meaning within them. I do like an obscure poem but some of these went a little too far - it’s always handy to have some idea what the poem is actually about!!
• 
  Atri

  Wandering slowly back after dark one night
  above a river, towards a suspension bridge,
  a sound concerns him that might be a tune
  or might not: noise drifting in, trailing off.
  ...
  
  Then his father's voice rising out of that choir,
  and his father's father's voice, and voices
  of fathers before, concerning him only,
  arcing through charged air and spanning the gorge.
  
  He steps off the cliff edge and walks across.
• 
  Sarah

  I heard Simon Armitage read some of these poems at Hay , which is what prompted me to buy the book. It also meant that as I read them, I heard them in his voice.
  
  It is a very varied collection, lots of humour but some very bleak points too.
  
  I also discovered a couple of YouTube videos of his poems which are worth checking out.
• 
  Andrew

  This is the finest poetry collection of a British master that I have read for years - and I read quite a number from contemporary poets with a growing sense of disappointment at their lack of artistic courage & verbal colour, and their narrowness of socio-political focus.
  This group of stunning poems really rugby-tackles & body-checks contemporary Britain...dare I say England?!...heaving down & holding up to the unmerciless light such vital current issues as increasing urban squalor, milennial youth disillusionment & cultural & spiritual disintegration, in an unforgiving series of different verse styles, without ever neglecting age-old poetic forms & notions.
  Simon Armitage radiates his deep affection for his native land - pieces on his favourite northern wildernesses with their ancient, tribal echoes...small towns that have decayed from the inside & the outside since the upheavals of 20th century 'progress' et al....- all firmly nailed by his grasp of the vernacular & the use of telling metaphors.
  The very best of his work. I think.
• 
  amelia

  Most of these poems weren’t memorable but I enjoyed Thank You for Waiting, Gymnasium and Nurse at a Bus Stop.
• 
  Jennifer

  Such is Armitage's skill and voice as a poet that there is pleasure, resonance, to be had even from poems whose meaning escapes me. There are some of these here. And some too that get away too completely. And then there are those whose meaning seems completely clear and the words a joy. Sad, wry perhaps. "To-Do List" featuring Donald Campbell was funny and then uncomfortable. "Poundland" utterly, utterly glorious and majestic (honestly), "Poor Old Soul" heartbreaking, "The Poet Hosts His Annual Christmas Party" and "Thank You for Waiting" are keepers. I'd've loved "Nurse at a Bus Stop" more, with its 'jilted bride of public transport' more if some of the images didn't seem to exceed poetic licence (those flatlining monitors are not for the cancer patients and uniforms are not worn out and about these days)
• 
  Mark

  
  Some of the poems in this collection made my synapses implode.
  
  The range of Mr Armitage's voice is astonishing. He can do opulent and sparse, bucolic and urban, Beowulfian and airport announcements, slapstick and death.
  
  I read over a thousand poems in the last few months, and I'd say the twenty very best ones I found in this slim, wonderful volume.
• 
  Sarah

  I do love these poems. My favourites are Thank You for Waiting, and At the Reading, the Poet Introduces His Poem. Armitage has a way of connecting all the areas of our lives from the deeply mundane, which he observes with a sparkling eye, to the deeply spiritual. This is one of my favourite collections.
• 
  Russio

  Unmistakeable Armitage, with a number of poems about modern life alongside a number about wild British landscapes. Some poems deliver themselves with a punch and a vigour: Gymnasium, Thank you for Waiting, others resist easy interpretation, prompting a sense of one's own flaws as a reader in the thought "That can't be it can it?" Sometimes poems shift around with incongruities and will need further research before yielding greater depths.
  
  Reviewers linked this to a state of the nation collection; I am not so sure about this, as I struggled to find the tendrils of Brexit in it. I think I found one about Farage pissing off after the result - the UKIP purple present - however, I may have misread this.
  
  One recurrent theme is loneliness and it is these poems that speak most eloquently to me.
  
• 
  Colin

  The Unaccompanied has all the verve and feeling that first drew me to the poetry of Simon Armitage in early collections Zoom! and Kid. There's a maturity of view in his new collection (Armitage is now in his fifties) that gives an intensity of perception and a sense of regret at the transitoriness of things that I haven't seen before in his work (except perhaps in his long millennium poem Five Eleven Ninety Nine). Some of the poems in The Unaccompanied are about places that I know very well - Wakefield Westgate station, Tinsley viaduct, the corpse road that winds up behind Dove Cottage in Grasmere - which gives them a particular resonance.
  I really liked everything about this collection. It's highly likely to be one of my books of 2017
• 
  Dragan Nanic

  I saw the advertisement for this book on Faber&Faber and it had a video with Armitage reading the poem Thank You for Waiting. I was immediately hooked. The straight to the heart dissection of the current society, one of the most banal experience - waiting in the airport - transformed in a poem.
  
  It is only one of the poems from this collection that really connects. Another wonderful example would be The Present which won the 2010 Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry, but even more important, made me wonder about the presents I will leave my daughter.
  
  This book is a rare jewel - politically, socially, personally, environmentally engaging and poetically delivered too. Another beautiful edition from Faber&Faber, worthwhile addition to any library.
• 
  Fiona

  I spent a very enjoyable afternoon reading through this collection. Whilst I feel that I need to go back and reread some of the poems, others I connected to immediately, such as The Present and Poundland. Thank You for Waiting is such a clever poem. Most of us have suffered the ignominy of being an economy passenger, standing around and waiting while those blessed with more money or prestige make their way to relatively luxurious seats, making it easy to understand the powerful message portrayed. And being a school teacher, I couldn't help but love Homework. Another great collection by this very talented man. Simon Armitage is definitely my favourite modern poet.
• 
  Simon

  Probably my favourite single volume of poetry since Ted Hughes' Hawk in the Rain. The poems Poundland and The Present are especially brilliant, and how could I not love a collection with an entire poem dedicated to keirin racing?
• 
  Bert

  Ah ha, there, proof. I do enjoy new, contemporary poetry by writers with broad popular appeal, so.
• 
  David

  Surprising at times breath-taking re-imaginings of the semantic range of familiar words in almost very poem.
• 
  Loki

  Interesting stuff, and well-written too. Down-to-earth and sensitive.
• 
  Elancharan Gunasekaran

  Lovely collection!
• 
  Anthony Frobisher

  The beauty of poetry is in its subjectivity. As you read the words carefully crafted into a poem, you juggle with them, hoping they land with some meaning. Sometimes the poems resonate and strike you with clarity. Other times you read and re-read and scratch your head wondering what exactly the author meant.
  Simon Armitage's The Unaccompanied is a beautiful collection of poetry, that is bleak at times, poignant, humorous, challenging and occasionally confusing and nearly impenetrable.
  But that is the point. The poet expresses their viewpoint in word and verse. Only they truly know the meaning of what they write.
  So don't be concerned if a poem, a verse, a sentence makes you stop and question what you read...poetry should do this. It should make you smile, laugh, feel anger and injustice, appreciate the world and all the intricacies of life, and make you scratch your head too.
  A superb, eclectic collection.
• 
  Nikki Houghton

  Heavenly, hellish, subtle, ingenious, beautiful work. Armitage is well deserving of the Laureate wreath. He will do it justice, he will serve his predecessors well. He might not save the planet but he will point the way to hopefulness and possible ways of healing.
  The last PL was a disaster, thank goodness they have chosen an actual poet, someone who can write, capture the world in a grain of sand and the tiniest moment in a squillion implied words. His poems? All going in the other direction, but always, always the direction of the reader and the light.
  May all his snowmen be abominable.
• 
  Siobhán

  Not sure why, but most of the poems didn't really work for me as I couldn't really make a connection with them. Some were really beautiful, other poems were just too smart for me? Too elaborate? I don't know. Descriptions of nature and his mixing of mythology, politics and our reality are superb in some cases.
  
  Might pick up another of his poetry collections, maybe one that is less dark? This one was really dark.
  
  3 Stars
• 
  Stefan Grieve

  An intriguing bunch of poems which to me struck a chord, whether it be melting snowmen, violance to a mushroom, a quest in poundland or two poetic forays in to my hometime of Wakefield.
  Some were funny, some were sad, most were a mixture which made me glad.
  I thought the majority of the poems were good and even entertaining, and some resonated emotionally.
  
• 
  Shivani Pillai

  A poetry collection that epitomises unconventionality through sheer lyrical craftsmanship. Armitage's superior poetic merit has the ability to bestow everyday objects like chairs, tractors and vehicles with charm. An absolute treat for the mind, a banquet for the senses that enjoy poetry, leading it to the heart.
• 
  Andrew

  I think this was the last collection of Armitage poems that were released before his appointment as Poet Laureate. This collection shows why. Armitage is very observational in some of his writing, reflecting on the state of modern Britain. Great stuff and looking forward to reading his Marsden collection over Christmas.
• 
  Loralie

  1.5*
• 
  Suzammah

  Pretty standard, rather dull.
• 
  Mina M

  *2.5 stars
  
  Some impressive literary devices but overall not really my cup of tea (I quite enjoyed “Thank You for Waiting” though)
• 
  Eliza

  3.5
• 
  Colin

  *justreadsomepoetryface*