'Thank You For Waiting' - New Poem Read Exclusively By Simon Armitage on Faber & Faber Website

by Rana Asfour

I'll be boarding a plane next week for solo time with me, myself and I! So, opening my inbox this morning to find this piece of news from Faber and Faber regarding their posting of an exclusive reading by poet, playwright, and Oxford Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage's poem 'Thank You for Waiting' seemed rather serendipitous.

'Thank You for Waiting' is one of the poems that appears in Armitage's new book 'The Unaccompanied', published by Faber & Faber. It will have anyone who's ever flown anywhere nodding their head in complete understanding! Here is a free exclusive reading of the poem on the Faber & Faber website.

'The Unaccompanied' documents a world on the brink, a world of unreliable seasons and unstable coordinates, where Odysseus stalks the aisles of cut-price supermarkets in search of direction, where the star of Bethlehem rises over industrial Yorkshire, and where alarm bells for ailing communities go unheeded or unheard. Looking for certainty the mind gravitates to recollections of upbringing and family, only to encounter more unrecoverable worlds, shaped as ever through Armitage's gifts for clarity and detail as well as his characteristic dead-pan wit.

​Insightful, relevant and empathetic, these poems confirm 'The Unaccompanied' as a bold new statement of intent by one of our most respected and recognised living poets.