Simon Armitage is a top bloke, which is fortunate, because it can be a dangerous thing to meet your idols or indeed people you only know from the written word. Some very fine writers turn out to be tongue-tied, hardly able to string a sentence together off the cuff. Not Armitage - he is an inveterate storyteller, switching effortlessly from a snippet about Odysseus to an anecdote about Disney. His comic timing is beautiful: "They took me for a power breakfast... in Hull!" and his ability to handle the audience is deft and awe-inspiring. He skilfully avoids us clapping at the end of poems, making the evening zip along, and charmingly invites questions while fending off pseudo questions that are really statements. He's done this sort of thing before!
As one would expect from his poetry he is a champion of the underdog, raising the humble wherever he finds it. I think this is part of the reason his poetry is so fresh - he has found poetic subjects others might overlook. His poem about Robin living his life post-Batman is fun, as are some of the quick snippets from his notebook that he says are part of an exercise to find or impose meaning on everyday objects. They remind me of van Gogh's chair, immortalising the everyday. And his hierarchy for entering aeroplanes is a bit of a feat - we all laugh, even though a good proportion of the room probably are Frequent Flying hedge fund managers. His jokes don't really have butts.
During the session some of the St Edwards pupils ask about analysing poetry - does it destroy all meaning. (I think they're rather hoping for a yes.) But Armitage says he loved dissecting poetry, fantasising about what it might mean. What an excellent person to be Regius Poetry Professor. He gives off a slight air of surprise, perhaps at being allowed to play with stories as a profession, perhaps at how successful he is. He tells us about the responses to some poems he published that are more like short pieces of prose. Some critics were adamant they weren't poetry - which he sees as quite an achievement. He's certainly irreverent - viz Odysseus in Poundland, reimagined as the underworld, in the style of Ezra Pound. He breaks off partway through to check we know what Poundland is. There is an indignant yes from the audience! Apparently Harrogate audiences didn't, but I can imagine we might be the patsy in the retelling of this story. I've seen this before at the North Wall - it's too nice a venue, and speakers make assumptions about the audience!
It's a great night. There's unplanned humour, when the lady in the upper gallery drops her walking stick onto some of the audience below, interrupting the first poem, but emphasising the intimacy of the venue. There's beauty:
"You're beautiful because you've never seen the inside of a car wash
I'm ugly because I always ask for a receipt"
and thought, and wisdom, and lucky, lucky pupils of St Eds for having a workshop from Armitage that afternoon. Voting Armitage Regius Professor was a masterstroke - with luck he'll be here often, and town and gown alike will benefit from Oxford's association with such a great person.