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The poet laureate’s commissioned work covers subjects as diverse as war and social comedy
It was an unwritten law of postwar Britain that all large parks should contain a commissioned Henry Moore sculpture and, as chance would have it, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic – a gathering of new poet laureate Simon Armitage’s own bulging file of commissioned work – features a series of “Henry Moore Poems”.
From the outset of his career Armitage’s great exemplar has been a fellow Yorkshireman – Ted Hughes – but that laureate approached the commissioned poem in a very different spirit. He rose to the challenge of hymning the Queen Mother by painting her, in Rain Charm for the Duchy, as godmother of the salmon. Armitage by contrast opens a sequence on Branwell Brontë by comparing him to Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba. Continue reading...