Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. As well as being a poet, he is a playwright, librettist, broadcaster and songwriter, who also writes extensively for theatre, television and radio.

Over the past three decades he has received numerous accolades including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes, an Eric Gregory Award, a Cholmondeley Award, a Lannan Award, the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize, the Hay Poetry Medal and a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for his lyrics in the BAFTA-winning television film ‘Feltham Sings’.

Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and between 2015 and 2019 was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. In 2019, he was Visiting Professor at Princeton University in the United States of America and was elected Honorary Fellow at Trinity College, Oxford.

Simon Armitage recently published his twelfth full collection of poetry, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic. He is also the author of two novels and three best-selling memoirs, All Points North, Walking Home and Walking Away. His acclaimed modern translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has sold over 100,000 copies and his translation of the medieval poem Pearl won the international PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation.

Armitage has written for over a dozen television films and presented documentary films on subjects ranging from new technology to Homer’s Odyssey. He has made up to fifty radio dramas and features for BBC Radio 4, including Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster, which opened subsequently as a stage play at Manchester’s Royal Exchange and was produced as a BBC film. His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2014. Armitage writes and performs with the band Land Yacht Regatta (LYR) whose debut album Call In The Crash Team is released in May 2020.

In 1999 Simon Armitage was named the Millennium Poet. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2010 he was made CBE for services to poetry. In 2018 he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and in May 2019 was appointed Poet Laureate.