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. .
Autorentext
Peter Armstrong was born in 1957 at Blaydon-on-Tyne, North-East England. 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. He worked full-time in the NHS as a mental health nurse and CBT specialist, contributing to research papers and text books. He is co-editor with Jake Morris-Campbell of William Martin's Marratide: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2025). He lives in Northumberland.