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Prose: Day 0, Home to Abbotsford

SA_Walking Home/1
In 2010 Simon Armitage spent 19 days walking the 256 mile Pennine Way as a 'modern troubadour'. This online resource presents archive material relating to the walk and creation of Walking Home, held by Special Collections.
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Simon Armitage describes writing 'Walking Home'
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SA_Walking Home archive materials
A summary of the Walking Home archive materials
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Armitage Harmonium proposa
Details of book proposal 1
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Armitage Walking Home Proposal doc
Details of book proposal 2
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SA_Walking Home Red Notebook
introduction to the red notebook
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Walking Home SA/8
prose diary entry for day 0
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Walking Home SA/13
prose diary entry for day 1
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SA_Walking Home/126
Prose diary entry for day 15
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SA_Walking Away/162
red notebook poems introduction
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SA_Walking Home/18
first draft of the poem 'Cotton Grass'
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SA_Walking Home/31
second draft of the poem 'Cotton Grass'
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SA_Walking Home first proof/287
second draft of the poem 'Cotton Grass' continued
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SA_Walking Home_74
blank page entry headed 'fell ponies'
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SA_Walking Home/130
Comparison of three types of writing referring to black huts.
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SA_Walking Home/134
Notes on the changing imagery of 'Above Ickornshaw, Black Huts'
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Armitage Notebook Black Huts
Notes on the importance of landscape for the poem
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SA_Walking Home/108
Notes on the importance of poetic influences
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Walking Home SA_162
writing themes listed at the back of the red notebook
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SA_Walking Home/Glossop Audience
introduction to the Walking Home photograps
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SA_Walking Home/slug088
Walking Home photographs as visual narrative
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SA_Walking Home/digital_image/21
Walking Home: poetry as travel guide
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writing themes listed at the back of the red notebook
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Further reading material for Walking Home.
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How does the form of the red notebook change? The first pages of the notebook detail Armitage’s journey from West Yorkshire to Abbotsford, the home of Walter Scott and the venue for the first reading. This journey was made before the walk started, by train and car. The prose here is fluidly written, in medium-sized paragraphs and with few amendments.

This entry anticipates the walk, unlike future entries which are largely reflective. As such, the entry includes two lists: one of journey poems, which might be read at events during the walk, and one of things Armitage is / is not afraid of.

The final paragraph, which does not appear in the published book, hints at the personal transformations that an encounter with the landscape of the Pennine Way might bring:  ‘it feels as if I am about to pour myself into a long watercourse, which will filter me through its geologies and landscape and dialects, until I emerge at the southern end, purified and sieved and with all impurity removed.’