There are more poetry readings at London’s Poetry Caf?5 October), hosted by John Hegley.Poetry from Poets’ Corner, as part of National Poetry Day 2006, is at Westminster Abbey, London SW1 on Thursday 5 October at 6.30pm Tickets, £10 (020-7654 4823). www.nationalpoetryday .uk. Simon Armitage and the volcanic island of Surtsey were both born in 1963. His new book of poems finds him anxiously wondering what became of them both It begins with the “Gifted, precocious sprog… the boy-god”, but ends on “that coast/ where all the world’s wunderkind are washed up”. Is this poetic wunderkind washed up? I don’t think so, but the book has a strong sense of mid-life angst It is also preoccupied with “the condition of England”. Armitage has always yoked local preoccupations to cosmic and sometimes apocalyptic scenes.

In “Roadshow”, the poet and his pregnant wife trudge towards some epiphany – “a silver extraterrestrial light”. But the moment they arrive, the whole shebang grinds to a standstill and the crowds stream away: “It’s precisely at this point/ that the universe – having expanded since birth -/ reaches its limit and starts to contract.” The crowd as it leaves “dopples past”: the Doppler effect is the dying fall made by all receding objects, most noticeably by wailing sirens. It’s a brilliant touch in a marvellous poem for our times, and only Armitage could have written it.
At times, Armitage sounds like a Ted Hughes in whom Yorkshire grit is used to bulk up a more modern mineral found in the street. He has a distinctly Northern take on the modern world, and this world is not very happy. In “A Vision”, architects’ fantasies of planned communities are picked over for the nostalgia of unfulfilled dreams, “all unlived in and now fully extinct”.The North/South faultline, mixed with that of class, runs very strongly through Armitage.

One of his earlier poems, “After Laycock”, contrasts a woman of privilege and a tramp: Laycock was a 19th-century poet from Armitage’s home village, Marsden. This poem resurfaces here as “You’re Beautiful”, in discursive prose couplets The dichotomies here seem, to Armitage, to be unbridgeable. Venus and Mars appear in a refrain, and the proverbial Martian could deduce a great deal of the human condition from this poem.Armitage could rewrite Auden’s condition-of-England book Look, Stranger!, and “The Stint” has the authentically Audenesque dystopian vision: “In the suburbs, squad cars / ran down unpaid library fines and overdue books.” There’s a strong whiff of Auden’s “The Fall of Rome” about this, and it also ends with a bleak animal image: “a murder of rooks, streaming / from under the hem of the sky”.. The former US President Bill Clinton paid tribute to Tony Blair today and congratulated the Government on its “stunning success” in running the country.

At Labour’s conference, Mr Clinton said it was “no accident” that Britain had led the fight against climate change and tackled unemployment under Mr Blair’s party.
And he applauded his likely successor as Prime Minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown, for his “brilliant economic leadership”. Mr Clinton, who last addressed a Labour conference four years ago, was given a standing ovation as he stood to speak. Introducing the former president and close personal friend, Mr Blair hailed him as a “superlative politician, a tremendous leader of America – the one and only Bill Clinton”. Mr Clinton said in 1997 the British people had turned to Mr Blair and New Labour with its unique commitment to progressive ideals. It was too easy when times were good to forget the hard work done behind the scenes.

But by any standard “your Prime Minister, your Government, your party have been a stunning success” He told delegates: “Well done You should be happy and you should be proud. “I want to say a special thank you publicly to my friend Tony Blair for his leadership – his preservation of our old Atlantic alliance through quite a lot of storm as well as occasional sunshine. “I want to thank him for his personal friendship to me – through storm and sunshine. “I want to thank Cherie and their children for their many kindnesses to Hilary and me and Chelsea and enduring the rigours of public life. “I want to thank Gordon Brown for his brilliant economic leadership and the entire New Labour team for their support.” Mr Clinton said the Labour Party should not be disheartened by calls for change from the electorate. “Make no mistake about it, the question for New Labour and the British people is not whether you will change. It’s how you will change and in what direction.” In an apparent swipe at the prospect of a resurgent Conservative party he added: “Do not let anyone ever present to your citizens any future choice – as long as you are debating issues in the Parliament and when the time that comes you must debate issues in the election – as change versus more of the same “You are the change agents in this great nation.