Hachette India

Blossomise

Simon Armitage

Angela Harding

** A Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller **

Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, brings new perspectives and energy to a timeless poetic subject.

Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholy disappearance. Full of spirited leaps of imagination and language, the twenty-one poems hopscotch between intense momentary haikus that honour the Japanese traditions of the blossom festival and stand-alone lyrical pieces that take in the stylistic tones of ballads, hymns, songs, prayers and nursery rhymes. From a crashed Ford Capri wrapped around the immovable trunk of a cherry tree, to saplings flourishing among skyscrapers and urban sprawl, the fizz and froth of the annual blossom display is explored here both as an exuberant emblem of the natural world and a nervous marker of our vulnerable climate.

Angela Harding responds to the poems in wonderful accompanying illustrations.

Published in collaboration with the National Trust as part of their annual Blossom programme and campaign.

Simon Armitage's book Blossomise was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 23-03-2024

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His collections, which have received numerous prizes and awards, include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020), Blossomise (2024) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). He writes extensively for television and radio, and is the author of two novels and the non-fiction bestsellers All Points North (1998), Walking Home (2012) and Walking Away (2015). His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare's Globe in 2014. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, and he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2018. Simon Armitage is Poet Laureate.

Angela Harding

Angela Harding lives in the small county of Rutland and works out of the studio at the bottom of her garden in the village of Wing.

Angela has worked on the covers for a number of books: including P D James, Ted Hughes, Katya Balen and James Rebanks. Her children's book RSPB Birds by Miranda Krestovnikoff was longlisted for the Klaus Flugge prize. Her most recent children's book Wilding, by Isabella Tree, is an illustrated adaptation of the bestselling book of the name. Other recent publications include Blossomise by Simon Armitage, a Sunday Times bestseller.

Angela has written and illustrated three books published by Little, Brown: A Year Unfolding, Wild Light and Still Waters & Wild Waves.

Angela's unique and distinct style has become instantly recognisable to nature lovers and book lovers alike, gaining her a huge number of fans who flock to buy her merchandise including calendars, cards, tea towels, totebags and jigsaws. She was the 2024 artist for the Books are my Bag tote bag.

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