Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Some poets you don’t see on stage in Liverpool from one year to the next. You know they exist by the volume of work they put out, but they somehow get tangled in the poetic mist that separates the city by the Mersey from the rest of the country as they criss-cross placing the truth of a rhythmical full stop in full reach of their fans, but not quite making all the way down to the birthplace of the Mersey Beat Poets.

For Yorkshire born Simon Armitage though the reverse is true, on the back of last year’s surprise visit to Leaf on Bold Street where the evening was so packed with both poetry, talk and an audience squeezed into every micro space available, Mr. Armitage made his way back over the Pennines and hills that divides the Lancashire of his early working life as a Probation Officer and the Yorkshire in which his poems have been crafted, honed and enjoyed and made his way to the Everyman Theatre to yet another rapturous welcome.

Needing no introduction but receiving the very best of ones from The Everyman and Playhouse Theatre’s Artistic Director, Gemma Bodinetz, Simon Armitage stepped onto the floor of the new Everyman Theatre for the first time and let time, as W.H. Auden would have no doubt been gratified to see, stop. Not physically, not even a poet can do that, but with words from a selection of poems from his 25 year career as one of Britain’s much loved 20th and 21st Century poets and mostly taken from his new collection, Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989-2014.

Opening the night though with a poem that was written to late to be included in the collection, the bitterness of modern observation coupled with the very best of a poet’s wit, Thank you for waiting – People of little or no consequence may now board, the evening was given the flourish it required across the two sets of poetic abundance.

With poems such as Aviators, Poundland, The Delegates, Rain, The Poet Hosts His Annual Office Party, A Chair, A Bed, To Do List, I kicked A Mushroom and a tremendous partial reading of his 2007 translation of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, the attentive audience inside the Everyman Theatre were given a first class lesson in the art of poetic delivery and it was one in which to savour.

In a city where poetry is not just a pastime to indulge in, more of a way of life that comes seeping out of every pore, to have people like Simon Armitage come to Liverpool and give hope in a minefield that others of similar standing will make their way past the East Lancashire Road and join in with what is a poetry obsessed people.

A tremendous evening performed with great heart and a smile throughout.

Ian D. Hall