Poet laureate Simon Armitage's audiobook New Cemetery reflects on the creation of a burial ground near his Huddersfield home during the Covid lockdown, using the site's construction as a prompt for meditations on mortality, memory and family. Rather than object like some neighbours, Armitage welcomed the development, reasoning that the dead make quiet and permanent companions, and the collection's genesis coincided with the death of his own father.

Each poem in the collection is named after a species of moth and written in three-line stanzas, with Armitage himself narrating in his familiar understated style. The verses move between the changing landscape outside his window and recollections of his parents, including his mother doing the washing and his father's Christmas Eve antics, alongside wry reflections on his own working life. The review also briefly covers two other audiobooks: Mark Haddon's memoir Leaving Home and Mary Beard's Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old.