Tag Archives: Simon Armitage

Now With More Nodes! Updated Prize Network Maps

In his comments to my last post on “Poetry Prize Networks in the UK“, Neil Astley said my maps ought to have included the Costa Poetry Awards. This had occurred to me when I was putting them together, but I hadn’t been able to track down a proper list of the judges for that prize. […]

Poetry Prize Networks in the UK

For some reason, the awarding of poetry prizes is always an occasion for controversy–accusations of logrolling, of blackballing, of various forms of individual and institutional favouritism and collusion, of low aesthetic and/or moral standards. There was more than the usual of this last week when the Poetry Book Society gave the 2014 T. S. Eliot […]

On the origins of bears, and words for bears

A poem by Simon Armitage called “The Great Bear” (from CloudCukooLand, 1997) has a few things to say about, and to, a bear – or bears in general. The poem is modelled as a set of ratifications (“it’s right… And right…” etc.) of ursine legends and myths, actual and invented:  [embedded from Google Books] The […]