To No Place by Peter Armstrong

To No Place by Peter Armstrong

Peter Armstrong’s To No Place includes a substantial selection of new poems written over the last decade in which he has continued to explore the themes of faith and doubt, loss and belonging that have long been the hallmark of his work. Throughout, he pursues an enduring engagement with place, whether in his native North-East England, or the edge-landscapes of Donegal, Hebrides, or the Baltic coast. Anne Stevenson highlighted a cinematic aspect to Armstrong’s poetry, and these poems present a vision of landscape that gives as much weight to a forgotten motorway spur as to a wider rural and post-industrial North, or the yet wider spaces of Western Australia.

The book brings together poems from Armstrong’s four collections, Risings (1988), The Red-funnelled Boat (1998), The Capital of Nowhere (2003) and The Book of Ogham (2012), together with others from his chapbook Madame Noire (2008) and work published in anthologies and journals.

A selection of Peter Armstrong’s early poetry was included in one of Bloodaxe’s first publications, Neil Astley’s anthology Ten North-East Poets in 1980. Now this career retrospective volume is published by Bloodaxe nearly 50 years later on Armstrong’s 70th birthday.

The poet, you feel, is a cartographer walking his own map, taking you with him on a guided tour of places and people that are almost out of touch with themselves; and on this journey, nowhere is a place you have to come to, however unsettling the view, however far from home you might feel

Peter Armstrong was born in 1957 at Blaydon-on-Tyne. After a selection of his early poetry was included in Neil Astley's anthology Ten North-East Poets (1980), his work appeared in four main collections: Risings (Enitharmon Press, 1988), The Red-funnelled Boat (Picador, 1998), The Capital of Nowhere (Picador, 2003) and The Book of Ogham (Shoestring Press, 2012), together with two pamphlets, Madame Noire (2008) and Two Ceremonies at the Border (2023), both from Shoestring Press. His 70th birhday retrospective To No Place: New & Selected Poems (Bloodxe Books, 2027) includes work from all these previous collections. He worked full-time in the NHS as a mental health nurse and CBT specialist, contributing to research papers and text books. He was joint author, with Stephen Barton of CBT for Depression: an Integrated Approach (SAGE, 2019), and is co-editor with Jake Morris-Campbell of William Martin's Marratide: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2025). He lives in Northumberland.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781780378084
ISBN 10	1780378084
Title	To No Place
Author	Peter Armstrong
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	2027-04-27
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.