davidclensy.com

There can’t be many jobs further removed from poetry than working as a probation officer on the tough streets of Manchester’s roughest areas, so Simon Armitage has to be something of an inspiration to would-be writers everywhere.

During his seven years working with troubled and sometimes aggressive youngsters in places like Moss Side can’t have left Simon Armitage with any great indiction that he would one day be a best-selling poet.

And after previously trying his hand at shelf-stacking, lathe working and even disco DJing, Simon probably knew better than to try to predict his future.

I interviewed Simon this week ahead of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“Poetry became something I’d do when I got home from work,” he told me. “I found the probation service job tough. You had to deal with some fairly unpleasant characters, and I’d often feel like I didn’t want to go to work and start picking through people’s troubled lives.

“But coming home and writing poetry at the end of the day was like a retreat into another universe for a few hours.

“I certainly never had ambitions to be a writer,” he added. “It’s just something that happened to me.”