Armitage: 'Creative writing is not a frivolous endeavour'

Poet Simon Armitage, shortlisted for tonight's TS Eliot Prize, tells Jonathan Brown why he's ready to fight for values he believes in

(Getty)

It's been a hectic time for the poet Simon Armitage in a year in which he has loomed ever larger in the cultural life of the nation. Having been appointed CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List he won the prestigious Keats-Shelley prize and tonight he is a strong contender for the TS Eliot Prize for his widely acclaimed collection Seeing Stars.

Last night he and the other five shortlisted poets were taking part in a reading at the Royal Festival Hall, and it is the same venue where as poet in residence at the Southbank in 2012 he will be taking a leading part in Britain's celebration of the Cultural Olympiad when he puts into action his idea for a Poetry Parnassus – in which writers from every competing nation will congregate for a week during the Games to read and debate their work.

In the meantime the man who was many people's choice to be Poet Laureate also found the time to walk the 264-mile Pennine Way, stopping off en route to ply his poetic wares in exchange for food and shelter. And next month he will be taking up a newly created chair as professor of poetry at Sheffield University.

Enjoying a short breather at his home in the West Yorkshire hills this weekend before heading back to London for the TS Eliot Prize, it seemed to come as something of a surprise when the achievements of recent months were laid out before him. "Yes, it has been a good year but I haven't really thought about it. It is very satisfying to be recognised for your work," he concedes.

But while all is rosy in the house of Armitage he is aware that around him in his native Huddersfield the rest of the world is perhaps not able to look forward to the future with quite such confidence. "I have never been a politically radical or outspoken poet as that is not how I go about things," he says. But when asked whether the believes the Coalition Government has helped make the world a better place there is a marked lack of equivocation. "What do you think?" he barks.

Armitage, 47, came of age in the 1980s. A former probation officer, devotee of The Fall and The Smiths, and a member of a band himself, his formative years were played out at a time of unemployment and decline for the industrial towns and cities of his native North but one which was also culturally very rich. So does he see parallels between then and now? "I'm starting to feel that," he says.

"People are quite scared of what is happening. We have supposedly gone through this big recession and supposedly coming out the other end but I see things getting slightly worse bit by bit. A lot of supportive apparatus that has been around people is being stripped away. Huddersfield is a good barometer town. When times are good the Christmas lights go up and things seem quite shiny. When things aren't going well, the charity shops move in pretty rapidly."

Having followed his father into the probation service – a job he believes he is probably too "softened" to do now – he remains defiantly supportive of the public sector. "I grew up in that employment culture and I think there are big issues for the North where there are cities and towns where employment is provided by the public sector and you do hear people on the news, the radio and the TV sounding off about these non-jobs that people have," he says.

Looking back over Britain's recent relative boom years he believes it is very easy for some to feel short-changed. "There have been layers of comfort over the last decade and a half," he says. "It now feels a little bit like we have been pouring champagne into the glass and it has looked full but it has been full of bubbles. Now they have all popped and there is only half an inch in the bottom of the glass. It's not something you'd want but it might provoke some interesting reactions both socially and artistically."

Perhaps the place where the economic effects are being felt most keenly is higher education, where Armitage has worked for nearly two decades and where the dramatic rise in tuition fees makes Armitage's impending professorship acutely timed. "It is a vortex at the moment. It is a difficult time but also an exciting one because students seem to have come alive and begun politically to respond to what is going on out there," he says.

And how does he see his place in a future world where young people from less advantaged backgrounds may baulk at the idea of taking on tens of thousands of pounds of debt for the pleasure of spending three years at university in the company of the Romantic poets? "Yes there will be all kinds of challenges down the line. If I can lend my voice to the idea that creative writing is not some sort of frivolous endeavour but a robust subject with high values and produces high calibre work – I want to be part of that debate," he says.

"I don't think that any political persuasion has its hold over the poetry world. What you tend to find is that poets are humane. They put a very high value on human life and the individual. That is fairly common amongst us and there is an idea of fairness."

As a stalwart of the English curriculum for the past decade, he has been impressed with the enthusiastic adoption of modern poets who he believes have helped capture the imagination of young readers – especially boys. But he does harbour a gnawing anxiety at looming changes. "I get the impression from the noises coming from Michael Gove that there is a traditionalist element to all this. Perhaps if I can convince him that Churchill read Keats then poetry will be all right," he laughs.

Life in brief

* Born 26 May 1963 in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Grew up in Huddersfield

* Studied geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Awarded a Master's degree from Manchester University

* Married with one daughter

* Until 1994 he worked as a probation officer in Greater Manchester, then

began lecturing on creative writing

* Has published numerous volumes of poetry, for the latest of which – Seeing Stars – he is shortlisted for tonight's TS Eliot Prize

* He writes for radio, television and film, and is the author of four stage plays

* Sings in band the Scaremongers

* Becomes professor of poetry at the University of Sheffield later this year