Blossomise

Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, brings new perspectives and energy to a timeless poetic subject.

Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholy disappearance. Full of spirited leaps of imagination and language, the twenty-one poems hopscotch between intense momentary haikus that honour the Japanese traditions of the blossom festival and stand-alone lyrical pieces that take in the stylistic tones of ballads, hymns, songs, prayers and nursery rhymes. From a crashed Ford Capri wrapped around the immovable trunk of a cherry tree, to saplings flourishing among skyscrapers and urban sprawl, the fizz and froth of the annual blossom display is explored here both as an exuberant emblem of the natural world and a nervous marker of our vulnerable climate.

Angela Harding responds to the poems in wonderful accompanying illustrations.

Published in collaboration with the National Trust as part of their annual Blossom programme and campaign.

About the Author

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His collections of poetry, which have received numerous prizes and awards, include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). From 2015 to 2019, he served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, and, in 2018, he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

About the Illustrator

Angela Harding is an author, printmaker and illustrator who lives in the village of Wing, Rutland. She is the author and illustrator of A Year Unfolding: A Printmaker’s View and Wild Light: A Printmaker’s Day and Night and has created the covers for many bestselling books, including The Salt Path and The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn, October, October by Katya Balen, English Pastoral by James Rebanks, and Christmas is Murder by Val McDermid.

Dimensions: 20.5 x 1.3 x 13.5 cm