Context on Remains- Simon Armitage

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Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in Yorkshire and as a boy loved to walk along the Yorkshire Moors. Landscapes influence his writings.

He claims he wasn't a very good student at school but he enjoyed reading and writing poetry at school. Inspired by Ted Hughes.

Studied Geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Later he went to Manchester to study pyschology. He wanted to go into the probation service like his father and wrote about the effects of television violence in his thesis. Proves he wasn't afraid to delve into serious, difficult or unusual topics.

Remains deals with war, death and PTSD.

Armitage worked in the probation service until 1994. Armitage took many ideas from this for his main characters.

Armitage also often takes on the voice of his narrator and in Remains he addresses the audience as though he is a soldier.

He was named as millenium poet.

Remains shows that Armitage wanted to bring real world issues into his work.

Remains comes from a selection of poems called 'the not dead'.

Remains has no specfic location but describes an ex-serviceman's experience

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Subjects and Themes

Remains- could refer to dead body or memories of the shooting remaining with the character

None of the soldiers are named as they are interchangeable. It is irrelevant as to who they are as any soldier in the same position would have done what they did.