Publisher's Synopsis
Sean O'Brien has described Simon Armitage as 'the first poet of serious artistic intent since Philip Larkin to have achieved popularity . . . it is possible that he will attain the sort of proverbial status Larkin now occupies.' It is a view that can be underwritten by the poems in this wonderful collection.
As the title implies, Armitage's flesh-and-blood account of numerous personal journeys reads like a private encyclopaedia of emotion and health. Vivid and passionate, the poems range from the rain forests of South America to the deserts of Western Australia, but are set against that ultimate and most intimate of all landscapes, the human body. Equally, the body politic comes into question, through subtle enquiries into Englishness in all its guises.
