Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage
Born	26 May 1963 (1963-05-26) Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England
Occupation	Poet / Playwright / Novelist
Nationality	British
www.simonarmitage.com

Simon Armitage CBE (born 26 May 1963, Huddersfield) is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.

Life and career

Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He was a post-graduate student at Manchester University where his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders. Until 1994 he worked as Probation Officer in Greater Manchester. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 1996 from the University of Portsmouth. He then lectured on creative writing at the University of Leeds, the University of Iowa and the Manchester Metropolitan University. In February 2011 he took up the position as Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.

He lives in West Yorkshire.

Writing

Armitage's poetry collections include Book of Matches (1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998), a collection of essays on the north of England. He produced a dramatised version of Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poetry entitled Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize), both of which were published in July 2006. Many of Armitage's poems appear in the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include "Homecoming", "November", "Kid", "Hitcher", and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these "Mother any distance...". His writing is characterised by a dry Yorkshire wit combined with "an accessible, realist style and critical seriousness."

Armitage also writes for radio, television, film and stage. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles. He was commissioned in 2004 by the National Theatre in London to write Eclipse for the Connections series, a play based on the disappearance of a girl in Hebden Bridge at the time of the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall. Most recently he wrote the libretto for an opera scored by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae, The Assassin Tree, based on a Greek myth recounted in The Golden Bough. The opera premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland, before moving to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. Saturday Night (Century Films, BBC2, 1996) – wrote and narrated a fifty minute poetic commentary to a documentary about night-life in Leeds. Directed by Brian Hill. In 2010, Armitage walked the 264 mile Pennine Way, walking South from Scotland to Derbyshire. Along the route he stopped to give poetry readings, often in exchange for donations of money, food or accommodation and is writing a book about his journey.

He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including The Sunday Times Author of the Year, a Forward Prize, a Lannan Award, and an Ivor Novello Award for his song lyrics in the Channel 4 film Feltham Sings. Kid and CloudCuckooLand were short-listed for the Whitbread poetry prize. The Dead Sea Poems was short-listed for the Whitbread, the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Universal Home Doctor was also short-listed for the T.S. Eliot. In 2000, he was the UK's official Millennium Poet and went on to judge the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize, the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize.

In 2004, Armitage was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours. He is a vice president of the Poetry Society and a patron of the Arvon Foundation.

Published works

Poetry collections

• Zoom! (Bloodaxe, 1989) ISBN 978-1-85224-078-3
• Xanadu (1992)
• Kid (1992)
• Book of Matches (1993)
• The Dead Sea Poems (1995)
• CloudCuckooLand (1997)
• Killing Time. (1999)
• Selected Poems (2001)
• Universal Home Doctor (2002)
• Travelling Songs (2002)
• The Shout: Selected Poems (2005)
• Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (2006)
• The Not Dead (2008)
• Out of the Blue (2008)
• Seeing Stars (2010)

Translation

• Homer's Odyssey (2006)

Further information: English translations of Homer#Armitage

• Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (2007)
• The Death of King Arthur (2011)

Pamphlets and limited editions

• Human Geography (Smith/Doorstop Books, 1986)
• Distance Between Stars (Wide Skirt, 1987)
• The Walking Horses (Slow Dancer, 1988)
• Around Robinson (Slow Dancer, 1991)
• The Anaesthetist (Alton; Clarion, Illustrated by Velerii Mishin, 1994)
• Five Eleven Ninety Nine (Clarion Publishing, Illustrated by Toni Goffe, 1995)
• Machinery of Grace: A Tribute to Michael Donaghy (Poetry Society, 2005), Contributor
• The North Star (University of Aberdeen, 2006)-Contributor
• The Motorway Service Station as a Destination in its Own Right (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2010)

Novels

• Little Green Man (2001)
• The White Stuff (2004)

Edited

• Penguin Modern Poets BK.5 (with Sean O'Brien and Tony Harrison, 1995)
• The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland since 1945 (with Robert Crawford, 1998)
• Short and Sweet: 101 Very Short Poems (1999)
• Ted Hughes Poems: Selected by Simon Armitage (2000)
• The Poetry of Birds (with Tim Dee, 2009)

Other books

• Moon Country (with Glyn Maxwell,1996)
• Eclipse (1997)
• All Points North (1998)
• Mister Heracles After Euripides (2000)
• King Arthur in the East Riding (Pocket Penguins,2005)
• Jerusalem (2005)
• The Twilight Readings (2008)
• Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist (2008)

Selected radio works

• Second Draft from Saga Land – Six programmes for BBC Radio 3 on W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice.
• Eyes of a Demigod – On Victor Grayson commissioned by BBC Radio 3.
• The Amherst Myth – on Emily Dickinson for BBC Radio 4.
• Points of Reference – on the history of navigation and orientation for BBC Radio 4.
• From Salford to Jericho – A verse drama for BBC Radio 4.
• To Bahia and Beyond – Five travelogue features in verse with Glyn Maxwell from Brazil and the Amazon for BBC Radio 3.
• The Bayeux Tapestry – A six part dramatisation, with Geoff Young, for BBC Radio 3.
• A Tree Full of Monkeys (2002) – commissioned by BBC Radio 3, with :zoviet*france:.
• The Odyssey (2004) – A three-part dramatisation for BBC Radio 4.
• Writing the City (2005) – commissioned by BBC Radio 3.
• Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster (2011), consisting of poems telling the story of Sophie Lancaster's life, together with the personal recollections of her mother.

Further reading

• Jeremy Noel-Tod, "Profile: Simon Armitage". Areté 4, Winter 2000, pp. 31–49.
• "Simon Armitage". The Guardian. 22 July 2008. http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-8,00.html. Retrieved 18 December 2009. 
• "Simon Armitage: 'I'm quite boyish in my outlook'". The Independent. 18 December 2009. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/simon-armitage-im-quite-boyish-in-my-outlook-1843591.html. Retrieved 18 December 2009. 
• Times article April 24, 2010 Simon Armitage says: ‘They’re poems because I say they are’ Accessed 2010-04-24
• The deadly serious poet's society: Simon Armitage, 46, on rejection, perfect steak - and why he never writes poetry drunk. Sunday Times Magazine, 23 May 2010.

See also

• AQA Anthology

External links

• Simon Armitage at Contemporary Writers
• Poetry Archive Biography, interviews, poems and audio files. Accessed 2010-02-22
• Guardian interview (07/2001) Accessed 2010-02-22
• Simon Armitage Official Site Accessed 2010-02-22
• Independent Interview Sunday, 21 September 1997 Accessed 2010-02-22
• BBC Interview (03/2004) Accessed 2010-02-22
• Griffin Poetry Prize 2006 keynote speech, including audio clip Accessed 2010-02-22
• Sonnets.org interview (01/2002) Accessed 2010-02-22