Poet Laureate Simon Armitage makes Remembrance visit to Ripon

We have provided extensive free coverage of this year's local Remembrance Day events. This has included a comprehensive listing of ceremonies, live coverage on Facebook, articles and galleries. Please suport our work by subscribing from as little as 14p a day. You can do so here.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage read poems in Ripon yesterday as part of a Remembrance Sunday event.

Songs of Poems and Remembrance, which was held at a packed Holy Trinity Church, featured poems and music with a remembrance theme.

Mr Armitage read some of his own poems, including In Avondale and Considering the Poppy, as well as those of war poets such as Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen, who was billeted to Ripon shortly before he was killed in the final days of the First World War.

The music included Benjamin Britten’s Still Falls the Rain, songs written by George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney and Goodbye France by Irving Berlin.

It was performed by tenor Nicholas Watts, pianist David Cowan, horn player Robert Ashworth, tenor Sam Brophy and Ripon’s Chapter House Youth Choir, conducted by Charlie Gower-Smith.

The event was organised by the charity Ripon Concerts, which has organised recitals and chamber music in Ripon since 1993.