I came to this collection from the poem "Poem" in an anthology elsewhere. Mr. Armitage is gritty and direct; some of his poetry is very fine. He seems angry and many of these poems are violent and disturbing. I found some offensive - I suppose that is the point. ( )

I really wanted to like this. I like Simon Armitage's TV presence, I like his prose, I like his dry wit, I like that he lives in and writes about places I know ... but I can't get into his poetry. So much of it just seemed to be random jottings that didn't line up on the right-hand margin, with no coherence to it. There were odd flashes of brilliance, but nothing like enough to keep me interested. ( )

(28 September 2012 – Kindle)

I picked this up because I’d been invited to go and see Armitage perform at the Book Festival on 5 October – my friend, Sian, helped out with the book stall so got guest list tickets. I’m really bad at arranging to go to things, so this was great (thank you again, Sian!).

Armitage is one of the few poets I enjoy reading. He’s sometimes raw, but the poems are always beautifully crafted and forged out of everyday language and sometimes startling metaphors. Some of them were a little brutal and had to be skimmed, but this collection from his various books of poetry was an excellent read, and made me look forward to the event. ( )

My favourites:

It Ain't What You Do It's What It Does To You; The Civilians; Zoom!; Brassneck; Kid; Abstracting Electricity; Not the Furniture Game - from 'Book of Matches', first lines: "Those bastards in their mansions:" - (second line) "ankylosing..." - "Some unimportant word or phrase" - To His Lost Lover; The Two Of Us (after Laycock); Five Eleven Ninety Nine; Song of the West Men; The Tyre; from The Whole of the Sky: 'The Keel'; extract from Killing Time