Walking Home [Lingua Inglese] - Brossura

Simon Armitage

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0571249892 ISBN 13: 9780571249893

Casa editrice: Faber and Faber, 2013

Riassunto

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets and singing for his supper with poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. Walking Home describes his extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey of human endeavour, unexpected kindnesses and terrible blisters. The companion volume, Walking Away, is published in June 2015.

Su questo libro

Recensione

'His memoir of rough landscape, wild weather, poetic lore and modern country and small town life is richly evocative of his Northern character.' --Iain Finlayson, The Times

'This is a hugely enjoyable and at times very funny book ... At every turn along the way he teases out such a series of jokey little scenes, reminiscences and observations that it is hard to read a single page without a chuckle ... Along the way we have the crisp and deadpan phrasing familiar from his poems ... It's all very gentle and self-deprecating with the ups and downs of the path, the weather and his moods. He is good company on the page ... And once or twice, from behind the jocular banter; comes a glimpse of the more serious poet, with heartfelt reflections on George Mackay Brown, the Odyssey and Sir Gawain And The Green Knight ... Walking Home can be added to his other engaging memoirs All Points North and Gig ... He is diligent, prolific and wide-ranging. By balancing humour and gravitas, he generates great affection in his readers. If he is not careful, Simon Armitage will end up becoming a national treasure.' -- Mail on Sunday

'Armitage has the rare gift of making his readers laugh out loud, as well as being surely the only poet to ever persuade the patrons of pubs and village halls from Scotland to Derbyshire to cram a total of £3,086.42 into a clean sock during 16 days' worth of poetic performance. But it is in moments of doubt, anxiety, cowardice and black misery that his book is at its most touchingly human. Like Odysseus and Sir Gawain, his is a flawed journey, with an untriumphant ending. But he does it. He goes home.' -- Telegraph

'Armitage has always been a wonderfully fluent writer, able to riff on almost any subject in either prose or poetry ... The result is a homage to an oddly old-fashioned Britain, full of glorious eccentrics and hearts of gold, but vividly believable for all that.' --Financial Times

'On the face of it, everything sounds rather plain, an old-fashioned world of packed lunches, mint cake and OS maps flapping in the wind, and also rather domestic ... But Walking Home is much more than this suggests. Armitage's great gift is his voice. He is able to make his walk talk as he does and I have never read a more fully inhabited book of walking. It is funny but moving, quiet but strong' -- Observer

'Armitage's journey is more pedestrian; a manageable distance along a worn path through familiar faces. But it's exactly those things which make this book so lovely. There are a thousand blogs out there offering accounts of walking everything from the Mongolian Steppes to Deptford High Street, all of them filled with exclamation marks and epiphanies, and all of them completely unreadable. But Armitage's account is so observant, so funny and so intensely likable you leave it wishing he'd picked a longer route. The dialogue is note-perfect and the jokes alone are worth the journey. And at the end of it all, Armitage has achieved far more than his stated ambition. Walking Home tells us not just about the bones of Britain, but about connections still to be forged between people and print, and the everlasting power of an open heart.' -- Sunday Telegraph

'Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way back to his birthplace, like a troubadour, like a tramp, like a human camera who turned what he saw on the way into words. A wonderful book.' --Jeanette Winterson, The Times Books of the Year

'[Armitage's] memoir of rough landscape, wild weather, poetic lore and modern country and small town life is richly evocative of his Northern character.' --The Times, Summer Books Roundup

'Laconic, contemplative style, and assured writing.' Sunday Business Post

'Wonderful blend of dry humour ... also a triumphant realisation that even if 'the land doesn't care, not one jot' about his odyssey, there are plenty of enthusiastic people along the route who turn out to support him.' --Daily Mail

Descrizione del libro

With Walking Home, join Simon Armitage on his heroic, hilarious and moving feat to walk the Pennine Way without a penny in his pocket.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Faber and Faber
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0571249892
• ISBN 13: 9780571249893
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 304