Simon Armitage
Award-winning British Poet & Writer
“With his acute eye for modern life, Armitage is an updated version of Wordsworth's "man talking to men" . . . . But his seemingly off-the-cuff style masks a sophisticated craftsmen indebted to Auden, Muldoon, and MacNeice as much as popular culture.” —Poetry Archive, England
Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in West Yorkshire, England. He burst onto the poetry scene with his first book, Zoom! in 1989 and quickly established himself as the most high-profile poet in the group dubbed 'The New Generation.' After studying Geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic, he worked with young offenders before gaining a postgraduate qualification in social work at Manchester University. He began working as a probation officer in 1988 before becoming a full-time writer, a job that provided a particularly rich source of anecdote and vocabulary for his early poetry. His northern roots and ear for street-wise language gave his work a young, urban appeal and combined with a comedian's sense of timing, have made Armitage a genuinely popular poet. In 2010 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at Buckingham Palace.
Zoom! was published by Bloodaxe Books, followed in 1992 by Xanadu, also by Bloodaxe, and Kid, by Faber & Faber. Further collections by Faber & Faber were quickly forthcoming: Book of Matches (1993), The Dead Sea Poems (1995), CloudCuckooLand (1997), Killing Time (1999), Selected Poems (2001), Travelling Songs (2002), and The Universal Home Doctor (2002). Seeing Stars was released in the UK in 2010 and is forthcoming in the US in 2011 (Knopf). It was shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry. Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006) was published in the US by Knopf in 2008. The Shout, a book of new and selected poems was published in the US by Harcourt (2005), and was short-listed for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. With Robert Crawford Armitage edited The Penguin Anthology of Poetry from Britain and Ireland Since 1945. Other anthologies include Short and Sweet: 101 Very Short Poems, and a selection of Ted Hughes’ poetry, both published by Faber & Faber.
Armitage is the recipient of nearly all the top awards for poetry in the UK, including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, a Gregory Award, and a Forward Prize. In the US he has received a major Lannan Award. Zoom! was a Poetry Society Book Choice. Kid was short-listed for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. The Dead Sea Poems was short-listed for the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Forward Prize, and the T.S Eliot Prize. CloudCuckooLand was short-listed for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. The Universal Home Doctor was short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Armitage has also won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize for 2010 for his poem entitled "The Present". Simon Armitage says: "I'm not sure if it's possible to be a Romantic poet anymore, but more and more poets seem to be turning their eye towards nature. To the necessity of its otherness. It's hard to explain, but speaking personally, if the birds and the moors and the trees and the ice disappeared, then I would have no interest in writing about a city street, and probably no purpose as a poet."
As a prose writer, Armitage is the author of two novels. His first, Little Green Man (Penguin 2001)—the story of 30-something divorcee Barney and his attempt to relive childhood experiences—explores the darker side of male friendship. His second, The White Stuff, (2004), by turns comic and moving, examines issues of childlessness and identity. Other prose work includes the best-selling memoir All Points North, (Penguin 1998), a collection of essays about the north of England, which won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year. His dramatised adaptation of Homer’s epic, Homer’s Odyssey: A Retelling, was published in 2006 by Faber & Faber in the UK and by WW Norton in the US. His translation of the Middle English classic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, was commissioned by Faber & Faber, and Norton published it in 2007. The translation has been nominated as one of 2008's best books by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. A BBC4 documentary, broadcast in 2009 and presented by Armitage, follows Gawain's journey from Camelot to the Green Chapel across the rural landscapes of Wales and England. His newest verse translation is The Death of King Arthur (Norton, 2011).
Armitage has worked extensively in film, radio, television, and theater. He wrote and presented Xanadu (1992), a "poem film for television," broadcast by BBC television as part of the Words on Film series, and his film about the American poet Weldon Kees was broadcast by the BBC in 1993. With director Brian Hill, he pioneered the docu-musical format which lead to such cult films as Drinking for England and Song Birds. Both were broadcast by the BBC as part of the Modern Times series, and Song Birds was screened at the Sun Dance Film Festival in 2006. His television film Feltham Sings won a BAFTA in 2005; and for his song-writing on that film, Armitage received the prestigious Ivor Novella Award. Moon Country (1996), written with Glynn Maxwell, retraced a visit to Iceland in 1936 by the poets W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, and was adapted as a six-part series, Second Draft from Saga Land, broadcast by BBC Radio 3. He wrote the libretto for the opera The Assassin Tree, composed by Stuart McRae, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006. His recent dramatisation of The Odyssey, commissioned by the BBC, was broadcast in 2004 and released on CD through BBC Worldwide. It received the Gold Award at the 2005 Spoken Word Awards. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of the Euripides play The Madness of Heracles, and Jerusalem, commissioned by West Yorkshire Playhouse.
Simon Armitage has served as a judge for the Forward Prize, the T.S Eliot Prize, the Whitbread Prize, the Griffin Prize, and was a judge for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. He has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and is currently a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.
About THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR (2011)
King Arthur comes to vivid life in this gripping poetic translation. First appearing around 1400, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, or, The Death of King Arthur, is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems ever penned in Middle English. Now, from the internationally acclaimed translator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, comes this magisterial new presentation of the Arthurian tale, rendered in unflinching and gory detail. Following Arthur's bloody conquests across the cities and fields of Europe, all the way to his spectacular and even bloodier fall, this masterpiece features some of the most spellbinding and poignant passages in English poetry. Never before have the deaths of Arthur's loyal knights, his own final hours, and the subsequent burial been so poignantly evoked. Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic new translation that promises to become both the literary event of the year and the definitive edition for generations to come.
About SEEING STARS (2010)
A hyper-vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales, creating peculiar and particular worlds. "Seeing Stars is as disorienting as its title promises, a wildly inventive mix of satire, fantasy, comedy and horror. In a series of vignettes that hover somewhere between poetry and prose...The book retains a satirical edge throughout, though the target keeps moving." —The Guardian
About TYRANNOSAURUS REX VERSUS THE CORDUROY KID (2006)
From one of the most important British poets at work today, this brilliant collection meditates on human battles past and present, on youth and age, on monsters and underdogs, on the life of nations and the individual heart. In poems that are sometimes lyrical, sometimes brash and comic, and full of living voices, the extraordinary and the mythic grow out of the ordinary, and figures of diminishment and tragedy shine forth as mysterious, uncelebrated exemplars. Armitage tells us ruefully that “the future was a beautiful place, once,” and with a steady eye out for the odd mystery or joyous scrap of experience, examines our complex present instead.
