In his poem KX (for King's Cross station) Armitage enjoins fellow northerners who take the train to London to "carry your heart like an egg on a spoon". It is one of 18 poems he performs here in the soft accent of his native rural Yorkshire, sometimes adding introductions that explain the personal circumstances that engendered them. Other highlights include You're Beautiful, a cleverly constructed and painfully funny analysis of the character traits (his own?) that create deep inner ugliness. This collection is part of the Poetry Archive initiative, launched last year by Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, to create a recorded collection of contemporary English-language poets reading their own work. Others in the compilation, which can be sampled at www.poetryarchive.org or bought on CD,