Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage: A Short Biography

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire.

He has published nine volumes of poetry including Killing Time, 1999 (Faber & Faber) and Selected Poems, 2001 (Faber & Faber) His most recent collections are The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs, both published by Faber & Faber in 2002. He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award.

He writes for radio, television and film, and is the author of four stage plays,
including Mister Heracles, a version of the Euripides play The Madness of Heracles. His recent dramatisation of The Odyssey, commissioned by the BBC, was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2004 and is available through BBC Worldwide. He received an Ivor Novello Award for his song-lyrics in the Channel 4 film Feltham Sings, which also won a BAFTA.

His first novel, Little Green Man, was published by Penguin in 2001. His second novel The White Stuff was published in 2004.

Simon Armitage has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and currently teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University. With Robert Crawford he 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.

The Shout, a book of new and selected poems will be published in the US in April 2005 by Harcourt. He is currently working on a translation of the middle English classic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, commissioned by Faber & Faber in the UK and Norton in the US.

Armitage on contemporarywriters.com
Summary piece from the Contemporary Writers mini site on the British Council web site. Includes a biography and critical perspective by Peter Forbes.

Simon Armitage on wikipedia
Biography and links on the online encyclopedia, wikipedia.