Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 28 Dec 2015

Walking away by Simon Armitage

We saw Armitage talking about and reading extracts from this book at a Ledbury Poetry festival event earlier this year and so I was able to hear his pleasant Yorkshire accent very clearly in my mind as I read. He decided to document this journey along the South West coastal path as a contrast to an earlier journey performing his poetry in different venues like a modern day troubadour walking back towards his home along the Pennine Way, an experience recounted in ' Walking Home'.

I haven't visited this part of southern England for over forty years but reading this book makes me want to go back for another look. The very entertaining journal of this walking and performing tour takes Armitage through parts of Somerset and Devon as well, but it is Cornwall that leaves the strongest impression. That isn't to say that he paints a particularly romantic picture of this notoriously splendid and dramatic landscape, in fact he finds the experience gruelling at times and sometimes very tedious.

As Armitage is one of our greatest living poets, the language is predictably superb throughout. His depiction of the natural environment is so beautifully drawn with precipitous gradients, dazzling horizons, textured grasses, coloured shells, rocky headlands and drizzly scrublands described over and over in different ways. I felt as if I was seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling every detail. He focuses on detailed minutiae and on broader impressions of the landscape equally well. It's difficult to say which bits I enjoyed the most but loved the part where he was surprised by the lighthouse at Trevose Head when it appeared unexpectedly above him:

'...a white, spectral form in the ashen fog, present yet invisible at the same time, looming and horribly near, I duck for cover.'

He meets plenty of people, some interesting and others less so, who accompany him by walking with him for parts of the journey and provide him with glimpses of local history and their own lives. He seems to be a reasonably sociable fellow but we also share his grumpiness at having to spend time with and stay in the often bizarre homes of some decidedly odd people. After a long day of walking, he is sometimes met with a tiny and often unappreciative audience and by the end of the journey is weary and disillusioned.

This is a really difficult review to compose  because I am trying to describe writing that is so wonderful and finding the right words to do it justice feels pretty impossible. His long, arduous physical journey is also about learning to spend time with his feelings and memories, valuing time being solitary whilst still being able to express loneliness and homesickness. All of this is sewn together with self deprecation and a gentle humour which makes it very endearing and accessible. I think what I trying to say (vey clumsily) is read this excellent book and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. 

 

Karen Argent

28th December 2015