Description: "In the poet's home county of West Yorkshire a few years ago, the Local Authority began converting a series of cow fields at the top of the road into a new cemetery. These poems, in regular, cascading tercets, sparked into being as Simon daily walked the site, with moorlands rising beyond it and the wind turbines of Bronte country to the north, watching the land tamed: eventually the muddy construction scene gives way to fresh headstones and mown lawns, and, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the spectacle of grave-diggers in Hazmat suits and socially distanced funeral services. These terse, sharply observed lyrics-each fancifully named for a species of moth, a creature whose numbers the poet sees dwindling across a lifetime of night walks-remind us to turn a cool eye on the doings of man, and yet to embrace all we love while we still can, as "Time, what else," stands "propped in a corner / like a cricket bat.""-- Provided by publisher.
Review Quotes: "An exceptionally skilled poet . . . This haunting volume demonstrates the magnetic pull of a mind that has kept us, across dozens of books published since 1989, mesmerized like moths to the flame." --Jade Cuttle, Observer
"[Armitage's] mordantly humorous feeling for life--and death--is undiminished." --Jeremy Noel-Tod, Prospect "[Poems of] wit and nimbleness . . . to read them is to hear the poet laureate in dialogue with the landscape and with forebears such as Ted Hughes." --Suzi Feay, Financial Times "With his signature Yorkshire vernacular, [Armitage] brings precise locality and light-heartedness to death and grief . . . the poems of New Cemetery tap into deeply personal material while drawing on the laureate's public persona." --Kit Fan, The Guardian