Product Description

All Points North is part-memoir and part-excursion. Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer’s formative years – from tax problems to probation to American tours, football to family to running away to Iceland – Simon Armitage explores growing up and being Northern. It’s about humour, language, writing, film, houses, homes, time wasters, one loose tyre, you, me and all points in-between.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28621 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'A joy. Celebrates the real world and revels in its mad glory' - Sue Townsend, Sunday Times 'I was irresistibly reminded of Alan Bennett - there is the same wry humour, wonderfully telling selection of detail or remark... a fine balance of humour and poignancy' The Times 'Laugh-out-loud funny... has all the resonant precision of a poet's ear and eye' Independent 'A delight - high-spirited, light-footed, very funny and wickedly observamt' - Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement 'The salty prose of an original poetic voice' - Melvyn Bragg, Observer

About the Author
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire in 1963, and continues to live near Huddersfield. He is one of the leading writers of his generation. He has won the Sunday Times author of the year, the Forward Prize, a Lannan Award, and an Ivor Novello Award for his song lyrics in the Channel 4 film, Feltham Sings.

Customer Reviews

It's Not So Grim Up North
In this brilliantly timed and executed departure from poetry Simon Armitage has opened up his private world like a wound for all to examine. The result is one of the most precise and poignantly written declarations of Northerness since Lancashire last won the County Championship. In a series of short but descriptive chapters Armitage conjures up a world far removed from the cloth cap and whippet image of Northern England and instead gives us an insight into recording for the BBC, watching Huddersfield Town and commuting across the tops into deepest Oldham. This is a book with a decidedly local humour with plenty of "in" jokes which will soar 747 like over the heads of anyone not born within a 50 mile radius of Marsden. It will infuriate the cognosenti of Camden and Hampstead and I love this book all the more for that fact alone.

Needs to be read with an open mind - reviewers think on!
I have to confess to being slightly alarmed and very disappointed by some of the Amazon reviews of this book. There is no doubt that Armitage has a great way with both poetry and prose - I have taught his poems at GCSE for several years and have heard him give readings which never fail to amuse and make me chuckle wryly at the vagaries of life. The reason I am concerned is the way that people have depicted life in The North of England - I grew up in Sussex and only moved to Sheffield in 1996 - after over a decade here I can honestly say that I would never move back down South. I encountered far more 'parochialism' as a 'Southerner' and a Grammar school education in Tunbridge Wells left me in no doubt as to the inherent ignorance and small-mindedness of many in the 'Home Counties'.
Armitage depicts the kind of daftness, naivety and sheer buffoonery that is encountered from John O' Groats to Land's End - but he does it through the eyes of an intelligent individual who is utterly at ease with himself and his upbringing. One of the best parts is Simon's recounting of an amateur dramatics staging of 'Camelot' and the all-male cast's sheer enjoyment and unfettered enthusiasm from start to finish. It does help that I know many of the places mentioned - I have family in Marsden too - but even without this I can recommend 'All points North' as a great read and perhaps even an eye-opener for anyone who claims knowledge of life beyond Birmingham.

It Almost Makes Me...But Not Quite
Okay, I'll be honest: I HATE the North of England with quite a passion. I lived the first two years of my life in Liverpool and the last fifteen in W Yorkshire. So my whole life i have been up here, passionately hating it. I look forward to going to University in a few months in Cambridge with a fervour. I hate almost everything about where I live. Seriously.

And yet, a couple of years ago, when I first read Simon Armitage's poetry, and even though so much of it is based around...not parochialism (because S.Armitage HAS travelled about, it's just that, bafflingly, he's settled back up here again)...but a (to me) strange love of The North, and that love is something completely alien to me, I couldn't help but get sucked into the language, the subjects and the new way in which Simon Armitage communicates his love of where he lives.

Perhaps it was the silly thrill of reading placenames, even shop names (like Bronx Clothing in Huddersfield, which I walk past every college day), and thinking...I know there. I've looked at that too. I've looked at somewhere that Simon Armitage has looked at. But when he looked he saw something poetic and beautiful, but when I looked I saw something ugly and hardfaced.

Or perhaps it was the dizziness of that I SEE, every day of my life, where the poetry comes from, but I disagree so much with the essence of it. but the stunningly skilful way in which it's written makes me want to read anyway, to disagree.

It's also, maybe (and for me, worryingly!) that I know S.Armitage is completely sincere with all his feelings for this place in which he and I both live. I've met him, several times. He's a lovely man. He IS everything Northern, but minus the ugly, hardfaced, parochialism that is so trademark up here. If everyone from Yorkshire were like Simon Armitage - blunt, amusing, intelligent, creative, friendly - then I'm sure I'd be as enthusiastic about living up here as he is. I've seen him reading his poems and prose. I've seen him read out lines about his love for this place, while we were actually IN this place. The wonderful thing about him is that he means every word of it.

So perhaps that's what makes this book so special to me: I think every positive thing written is the opposite from the truth, but that's probably part of the attraction. But Simon Armitage could write about a WHEELIE BIN and make it sound transcendental. This book is a must: whether you share Simon's thoughs of The North, whether you share mine, or whether you're lucky enough to be well away from here!