Zoom! (poetry book)

Zoom! is a 1989 poetry collection by the British poet Simon Armitage, and his first full-length collection. It was selected as a Poetry Book Society Choice,[1] shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award,[1] and was made the PBS Autumn choice.[2]

Zoom!
Cover of first edition
AuthorSimon Armitage
GenrePoetry
PublisherBloodaxe Books
Publication date
1989
Media typePaperback
Pages80
AwardsPoetry Book Society Choice
ISBN978-1-85224-078-3
OCLC21872787
Followed byKid 
Websitehttps://www.simonarmitage.com/zoom/

Author

Simon Armitage is an English poet, playwright and novelist. He was appointed as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2019.[3] He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds and became Oxford Professor of Poetry when he was elected to the four-year part-time appointment from 2015 to 2019. He was born and raised in Marsden, West Yorkshire.[4][5] At the start of his career, and at the time Zoom!, his first full-length poetry collection,[6] was published, he was working as a probation officer.[1]

Book

Publication history

Zoom! was published in 1989 as a paperback by Bloodaxe Books in Hexham, Northumberland.[7] Many of the collected poems were first published in three of Armitage's pamphlets, namely the 1986 Human Geography, the 1987 The Distance Between Stars and the 1987 The Walking Horses.[8]

Synopsis

 Out of the melting pot, into the mint;
next news I was loose change for a Leeds pimp,
burning a hole in his skin-tight pocket
till he tipped a busker by the precinct.

Not the most ceremonious release
for a fresh faced coin cutting its teeth.
But that's my point: if you're poorly bartered
you're scuppered before you've even started.

Simon Armitage, from "Ten Pence Story", inZoom!

Zoom! is a collection of 61 poems, 49 of them less than a page in length. They are grouped in a single list. There is no introduction, and there are no illustrations.

Awards

The book was selected as a Poetry Book Society Choice.[1] It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award.[1] It was also the PBS Autumn choice; John Harvey of Slow Dancer, which published some of Armitage's works including The Walking Horses in 1988, commented that "this kind of success is not so much rare as unheard of."[2]

Analysis

Poetry critics have stated that Zoom! marked Armitage as an exciting new voice in English poetry, and gained him wide critical acclaim.[9] Jo Livingstone, in The New Yorker, calls Armitage "a decidedly modern poet", citing the collection's title, albeit "one who is known for his accessibility and his respect for the performative aspect of poetry."[10]

Recalling the period when he was writing Zoom!, Armitage stated that he had no realistic expectation of being published, so writing poetry was "just for fun", something that is inevitably lost after becoming "an 'author'".[11] He quoted a "blurb writer" who wrote that "Zoom! rocketed [Armitage] to poetic stardom", noting that he was still working in probation four years later. Stating that the book was "never intended as a manifesto", he writes that what Zoom! actually achieved was to magnify everyday life in semi-rural West Yorkshire, the twenty-something Armitage "trying to articulate inner landscapes against a backdrop of knackered industries and sweeping moors, using a language and dialect passed down through generations but spiked with the vernacular of postmodernism and post-punk."[11]

Emma Baldwin writes on Poem Analysis that the title poem, Zoom!, which appears last in the book, makes use of a variety of literary devices including alliteration, enjambment, and imagery. The poem is in free verse but has structure, each couplet consisting of a long line and a much shorter line, in Baldwin's view forcing the reader to move their eyes rapidly from side to side, creating a rapid pace.[12]

The poet and novelist Ruth Padel wrote in The Independent that the book "made real-life speech and activity the centre of a tungsten-tough poetry of deadpan flair and casual, leave-it-there humour. The cleverness was in the angle. Armitage wrote about grow-bags, walk-in wardrobes, brake-fluid, cashing the Giro, dumping granny at the old people's home."[13]

References
  1. Armitage, Simon. "Zoom!". Simon Armitage. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  2. Harvey, John (14 May 2019). "Simon Armitage: Poet Laureate". John Harvey. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  3. "Simon Armitage: 'Witty and profound' writer to be next Poet Laureate". BBC News. 10 May 2019. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
  4. Flood, Alison (19 June 2015). "Simon Armitage wins Oxford professor of poetry election". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
  5. "Biography » Simon Armitage – The Official Website". www.simonarmitage.com. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
  6. O'Brien, Sean (1 September 2017). "Poetry: Nothing to pass on: The imaginative response to austere times". Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  7. Armitage 1989, p. 4.
  8. Armitage 1989, p. 6.
  9. "ON THE PHONE Simon Armitage, Kid (Faber and Faber)". PN Review. 18 (6 (86) July-August 1992). July 1992.
  10. Livinstone, Jo (16 June 2016). "The Strange Power of a Medieval Poem About the Death of a Child". The New Yorker. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  11. Armitage, Simon (19 September 2020). "'Writing was just for fun then': Simon Armitage on writing Zoom!". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  12. Baldwin, Emma. "Zoom! by Simon Armitage". Poem Analysis. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  13. Padel, Ruth (20 September 1997). "Heaven can wait". The Independent. Retrieved 24 February 2022.

Bibliography
  • Book's page on Armitage's website, with poem "Ten Pence Story"
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