· Email your arts stories to arts.diary@guardian.co.uk
See Also
Friday, 6 June 2008
Arts diary: Francesca Martin on Simon Armitage's tribute to Paul Weller
Poet Simon Armitage may be among the favourites to be named Poet Laureate later this year, but he has taken time out from such lofty concerns to pen a short story in honour of Paul Weller. The piece - published in the sleeve booklet of Weller's ninth solo studio album, 22 Dreams, which is released this week - follows one man's colourful, dreamlike adventures, which include listening to a busking Noel Gallagher (who himself sings on the album, along with other contributors such as Graham Coxon). Armitage wrote it as an interpretation of the story he feels the album tells. A long-term Weller fan, Armitage has previously praised another of Weller's songs, Thick as Thieves, for its "terrific standard of writing", adding that it summed up the fact "that you have to leave your past behind if you want to learn and develop and grow as a person".
