Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is a British musician from the United Kingdom, better known in the wider arts world as a poet, playwright and novelist. He is born in Huddersfield and studies at Colne Valley High School in Linthwaite before reading geography at the University of Portsmouth. He later teaches creative writing at the University of Leeds and at the University of Iowa’s writers’ workshop, and he is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Writing and published work

Armitage publishes several volumes of poetry, including Zoom!, Xanadu, Kid, Book Of Matches, The Dead Sea Poems, CloudCuckooLand, Killing Time, Universal Home Doctor, Travelling Songs, Homer’s Odyssey and Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid. His poetry collection Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He also writes novels, including Little Green Man and The White Stuff, and prose such as All Points North, a collection of essays on the north of England.

Drama, radio and other work

Armitage writes for radio, television and film, and he authors four stage plays. These include Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides’ The Madness of Heracles. He also writes the libretto for The Assassin Tree, an opera scored by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae and based on a Greek myth recounted in The Golden Bough. The opera premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival before moving to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

He also receives a commission from the National Theatre to write Eclipse for Connections, a play based on the disappearance of a girl in Hebden around the time of the 1998 eclipse in Cornwall.

Awards and recognition

Armitage receives several awards for his poetry, including the Sunday Times Author of the Year, a Forward Prize and a Lannan Award. He also receives an Ivor Novello Award for song lyrics in the Channel 4 film Feltham Sings. He serves as a judge for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize and for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Many of his poems appear on the GCSE English Literature syllabus, including “Homecoming”, “November”, “Kid”, “Hitcher” and poems from Book of Matches.

Anthologies

Armitage appears in a number of anthologies, including The Reater Issue 3 from Wrecking Ball Press.