Blossomise by Simon Armitage, with illustrations by Angela Harding

A glorious collaboration between Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, and the illustrator Angela Harding, Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom and its melancholy disappearance.

The 21 poems hopscotch between intense momentary haikus and stand-alone lyrical pieces that take in the stylistic tones of ballads, hymns, songs, prayers and nursery rhymes. From a crashed Ford Capri wrapped around the trunk of a cherry tree, to saplings flourishing among skyscrapers and urban sprawl, the fizz and froth of the annual blossom display is an exuberant emblem of the natural world and a nervous marker of our vulnerable climate.