Most students remember Simon Armitage from the days of GCSE exams; his poetry has been on the English Literature syllabus for twenty years, and is now being studied by his own daughter. As well as the likes of ‘Homecoming’ and ‘Kid’, Armitage has translated works from The Odyssey to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written T.V. scripts, radio plays and novels, and adapted a number of classical works for stage.

Visiting the Cambridge Union, his dry wit and uncanny ability to speak in soundbites delighted the audience. Having focused on his translation work, he told me afterwards that if he could have written one poem by another writer he would choose The Odyssey, because “the royalties just keep rolling in on that one. To be responsible for writing the foundation stone of Western literature would be pretty satisfying.”

He also, of course, spoke at length about poetry. Daydreaming, he claims, is vital to the imagination, and it is worrying that the pressures on young people sometimes steal the hours we should spend gazing out of windows. His poetry is written with “stolen time” while other media – plays, translation works and so on – are done in “office hours”. He is constantly jotting down ideas for new poems, and has “never really been able to switch it off - it’s annoying, really.”

One question asked was about the definition of poetry, which Armitage dismisses, as he doesn’t think it should be given boundaries. Indeed, he also discussed the poetry he wrote after the horrors of 9/11, saying that no-one wanted to talk about the people who jumped off the buildings, yet no-one could help but imagine themselves faced with having to make that decision. A question of mine on whether poetry is about personal expression or connecting with others met with a similar response.

“I don’t think poetry is just for one thing – it doesn’t really work to narrow it down. It certainly can be a way of self-examination and exploration, and I think on that basis can be very therapeutic for some people. It is also a very humane art form, and it engenders a sense of empathy in people who read it and people who write it. I often sense that good things come from being involved with it.”

Armitage is, however, increasingly interested in the art of speaking poetry aloud. While he used to think of it as “a day out for the poem”, he now sees the importance of connecting poetry back to “the campfire, the theatre, the temple...” Armitage wants to draw out the lyrical, aural quality of his own works as well as in his translations – telling me that he doesn’t want “to write small, secretive, mimetically-sealed, sterile works that aren’t trying to have a dialogue with somebody” rather, to wake up the dozy schoolchild who hasn’t quite found what they connect with yet.

The process of writing his poetry was something I was particularly keen to ask him about, as the way he described it makes it sound very natural. And to a great extent, it sounds like it is: he has “a notebook which I carry around with me all the time” and tries to start applying language to the concepts and images he stumbles across in his daydreams. “Just try to hang on to that moment,” he tells me, “that provocation to make a poem out of something. If you don’t act on it, it goes cold.”

Although his taxi was waiting, Armitage took one final question, never allowing himself to be rushed - still clearly considering each in depth. Having won a formidable number of awards, I wondered which made him most proud: something he answered with his characteristic measured wit. “Perversely, the thing that I’m most proud of on the mantelpiece is an Ivor Novello award for song-writing. I once saw Paul McCartney being interviewed and he had two of them behind his shoulder. I’ve always talked about the sonic properties of poems, and how important acoustics and sound in poetry are to me. I think I’ve always associated lyric poetry with a version of song, so I was pleased I could carry it over into that other field of art. The CBE was pretty cool as well.”