Poet Simon Armitage will be guiding a walking tour in celebration of his book Walking Home, on Monday 10 September in Kirklees.
The event
Kirklees Libraries Reader Development and the Kirklees Physical Activity Team, and Health Walks groups have joined forces to organise this great event which is part of the South Pennine Walk and Ride Festival. We shall walk in a leisurely manner to Marsden along the towpath to Marsden Mechanics Hall where Simon will meet the group to present an entertaining musical slide show with readings from his latest book Walking Home which describes when, in the summer of 2010, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way.
If you would like to attend, tickets must be booked in advance and cost £2. Please see here for more details.
About Walking Home
In the summer of 2010, Simon Armitage set out to tackle the Pennine Way. Walking Home is his account of that journey: day-by-day, blow-by-blow, stride-by-stride.
Attempting the infamous and gruelling 256-mile route from north to south, instead of the normal south to north, Simon walked from Kirk Yeltholm, on the Scottish side of the border, through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.
Travelling as a ‘modern troubadour’ without a penny in his pocket, he paid his way with his poetry, stopping to give readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms and passing around his ‘hat’ (walking sock) at the end of each performance.
Walking Home describes this extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey. It’s a story about Britain’s remote and overlooked interior – the wildness of its landscape and the generosity of its communities. It’s about facing emotional and physical challenges, and sometimes overcoming them. It’s nature writing, but with people at its heart. Contemplative, moving and droll, it is a unique narrative from one of our most beloved writers.
My mind’s drifting. I’m thinking of the 256 miles and nineteen consecutive poetry readings stretching away to the south. I’ve made a huge song and dance about this venture, talked about it to everyone who’d listen, forked out hundreds of pounds on boots and waterproofs, and roped in tens of dozens of volunteers to cart my bag and lay on events and give up their beds. The whole project is based on the kindness of strangers, the entire itinerary held together by nothing more than a loosely connected chain of names and addresses and telephone numbers of people I’ve never met and who don’t know me from Adam. But the weakest link in that chain, I now realise, standing here among the trappings and trophies of Sir Walter Scott’s epic deeds and dazzling accomplishments, is me.
About Simon
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, he has published ten collections of poetry, including Selected Poems (2001),_ Seeing Stars_ (2010), his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007) and more recently The Death of King Arthur (2012). A broadcaster and presenter, he also writes extensively for television and radio, is the author of two novels and the best-selling memoir All Points North. In 2010 he received the CBE for services to poetry. As Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre, he was the artistic curator of this summer’s Poetry Parnassus, in which poets from all the participating Olympic nations came together at the Southbank for a week of readings, talks and performances.
