From Portsmouth poly to Poet Laureate - Simon Armitage returns to the city for a special show at New Theatre Royal

However, Simon – who has been the nation’s poet laureate since 2019 – will put that oversight right when he appears there for An Evening With… on Wednesday, July 10.

"The whole city looks very different from what it did 40 years ago, and so it should,” he says. “It's always incredibly nostalgic for me getting off the train there and walking up the Square by the Guildhall, particularly Bateson Hall, where I lived in the third year.”

But when it comes to the NTR, he adds: “You know what? I don't think I've ever been in there. I only lived around the corner, so yeah, I'll be breaking new ground!”

This special evening of readings, audience Q&A and book-signing will allow the poet to delve deep into his illustrious career.

“But there's no sword swallowing or trick cycling or anything, it's just me,” he says with a wry chuckle.

His numerous awards include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and an Ivor Novello for song writing. His latest book Blossomise is a Sunday Times bestseller.

A regular broadcaster, Armitage presents the popular BBC Radio 4 series The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed. He also writes, records and performs with the band LYR (Land Yacht Regatta). And his acclaimed modern translation of the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has sold more than 100,000 copies. He is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, two novels and three non-fiction bestsellers and is currently professor of poetry at the University of Leeds.

Some of the readings will be from Blossomise – Simon’s latest collection (also recorded as an EP with LYR), which features several haiku – the Japanese poems of just 17 syllables.

While not a form he’s worked with before, Simon says: “It seemed appropriate to this project. We were working as the band with the National Trust – they commissioned us to write some music to celebrate blossom, and blossom is a huge deal in Japan, they have big festivals there, so it seemed like an appropriate form for that subject matter.

“And also, I was looking very intently, almost under a microscope sometimes at the blossom and I thought that doing something quite minimal would also be the right thing to do.

“Haiku are difficult, they're not really things that I've written in the past before. Anybody can tap out 17 syllables on their fingers, but trying to get the point to work in such an intense little space is not easy. It's definitely a case of less is more.

"It always reminds me of what somebody once said, ‘I'm sorry I've written you such a long letter, I didn't have time to write you a short one’.”

May of this year marked halfway on Armitage’s tenure as our national poet.

“It's a good opportunity at the moment for looking back on the things that I've been doing and looking forward to the things to come.”

He has of course had two major royal events to memorialise – the Queen’s death and the coronation of King Charles III. Did he feel any weight of responsibility as the poet laureate having to tackle subjects like that?

“It was made fairly clear to me when I took the role on that there might be some fairly major events in the next 10 years, and they duly happened! Yeah, I think there is a weight of responsibility.

“I think part of it is to do with imagining that the poems will have a different audience to the usual work.

“Usually I write the poems and they go into books and probably end up with fairly dedicated or specialised readers, but the poems for those kind of occasions will be in newspapers or they might be incorporated into television programmes. There’s just an awareness that they need angling towards a wider public and that they might be part of the historical record for those occasions as well.”

As a geography undergraduate in Portsmouth, Simon recalls that he was writing while here, but he didn’t think it would be his vocation.

"I'm not sure I knew which direction I was going in!” he says of his time here. “I was going in no direction or all directions. I don't know what I imagined. I probably knew at heart that I couldn't go off and become 'a geographer' for a career.

“I was thinking about cartography and town planning at various stages, but I was always writing on the quiet, privately.

“Some people that I know from back in the 80s, when I was at Portsmouth, have told me that I did express, even then, the ambition to become the poet laureate. I don't know how, I'd barely written anything then.

“I think I did have a dream about writing, but I went into a more practical world of work and profession – I was a probation officer for seven or eight years.”

As a huge music fan though, he would often go to gigs here.

"The gigs in Portsmouth were absolutely fantastic at the time. That's something else that's changed nationally – very few universities now have a venue where they put gigs on. But back then it was a mainstay of the music circuit.

“And Portsmouth Poly had brilliant gigs in the student union, I've seen all sorts of people there. I saw Billy Bragg and quite a lot of the obscure indie bands that I absolutely loved all came and played there, but I also saw U2 in Portsmouth at the Locarno, I think it was. And I saw Bauhaus at the Guildhall.

"Every week there would be either a big band playing in the city, or an indie band of some kind, an NME indie band playing in the union.”

Portsmouth has featured in his writing since he moved back to his native Yorkshire.

"I've written a lot about some of the memories of being there. Actually, I wrote one poem particularly because I was invited back by the university, as it is now, to receive an honorary degree,” he was made Doctor of Letters in 1996, “and I wrote a piece for that occasion.”

And he is currently working on a piece to be incorporated into the new sea defences at the Theatre of the Sea in Southsea.

“I've been writing the poem and we're just talking about how it's going to be fabricated into the wall itself. I've been down a few times recently to look at the site and to talk about it and how it's going to be incorporated and included.”

Although no date has been set yet for its unveiling, Simon hopes it will be in the next couple of months.

As a professor of poetry how does he feel about the recent debates about Rishi Sunak’s government planning to scrap student loans for those studying ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees – widely thought to mean creative arts subjects.

"There has been a trend from the time really when fees were introduced in universities, and particularly through Covid where students felt a lot of pressure – and put a lot of pressure on themselves to do a vocational course – which might seem as if it leads directly to a particular job.

“I think my argument would always be that: A) when you're at university you should be having a bit of fun, and B) that certainly a degree in English, I can barely imagine any job where a skill with language is not a benefit. If I think about all the different areas that I've worked in, even in probation where I wrote a lot of court reports, being familiar and comfortable with a dictionary and being able to use language confidently is always an addition to any job!”

No argument here.

An Evening With Simon Armitage is at New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on Wednesday, July 10, 7.30pm. Tickets £20. Go to newtheatreroyal.com.