The collected lectures of the poet laureate Simon Armitage when he was Oxford Professor of Poetry are to be published this week. In A Vertical Art Armitage tries to identify a ‘common sense’ approach to an art form that can lend itself to grand statements and vacuous gestures, questioning both the facile and obscure ends of the poetry spectrum, asserting certain fundamental qualities that separate the genre from near-neighbours such as prose and song lyrics, and examining who poetry is written for and its values and use in contemporary society.

A Vertical Art: Oxford Lectures will be published by Faber & Faber on 20 May.