Blossomise

A glorious collaboration between Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate and the illustrator Angela Harding, celebrating the transformations of Spring Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholy disappearance. Full of energetic leaps of imagination and language, the twenty-two 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. Commissioned by and published in collaboration with the National Trust as part of their annual Blossom programme and campaign.