' The most popular English poet since Larkin' Sunday Times After more than a decade & following his celebrated adventures in drama translation travel writing & prose poetry Simon Armitage's eleventh collection of poems heralds a return to his trademark contemporary lyricism The pieces in this multi-textured & moving volume are set against a backdrop of economic recession & social division where mass media the mass market & globalisation have made alienation a commonplace experience & where the solitary imagination drifts & conjures The Unaccompanied documents a world on the brink a world of unreliable seasons & unstable coordinates where Odysseus stalks the aisles of cut-price supermarkets in search of direction where the star of Bethlehem rises over industrial Yorkshire & where alarm bells for ailing communities go unheeded or unheard Looking for certainty the mind gravitates to recollections of upbringing & family only to encounter more unrecoverable worlds shaped as ever through Armitage's gifts for clarity & detail as well as his characteristic dead-pan wit Insightful relevant & empathetic these poems confirm The Unaccompanied as a bold new statement of intent by one of our most respected & recognised living poets 'A writer who has had a game-changing influence on his contemporaries' Guardian' Armitage is that rare beast a poet whose work is ambitious accomplished & complex as well as popular' Sunday Telegraph' The best poet of his generation' Craig Raine Observer