Simon Armitage

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

Contents 1 Academic history 2 Notable works 3 Literary work 4 Published works 5 References 6 External links

Academic history

Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield. He then went on to study geography at the University of Portsmouth, before lecturing on creative writing at both the University of Leeds and at the University of Iowa's writers' workshop. He is currently a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Notable works

Armitage has published several volumes of poetry, including 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 (1999), a collection of essays on the north of England.
Armitage 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. 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 on the 25th of August, before moving to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on the 6th of September.

Literary work

Armitage also writes for radio, television, and film. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles. 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. He was one of the judges for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2006 was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Armitage was also commissioned by the National Theatre to write Eclipse for Connections [1], a play based on the disappearance of a girl in Hebden at the time of the 1998 eclipse in Cornwall.

Published works

Poetry

• Zoom! (1989)
• Xanadu (1992)
• Kid (1992)
• Book Of Matches (1993)
• The Dead Sea Poems (1995)
• CloudCuckooLand (1997)
• Killing Time (1999)
• Mister Heracles
• Selected Poems (1991)
• Universal Home Doctor (2002)
• Travelling Songs (2002)
• Homer's Odyssey (2006)
• Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (2006)

Novels

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

Other writing

• All Points North (1999)
• Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (2007)
• Eclipse (1997)

Many of Armitage's poems now appear in the GCSE syllabus for English Literature. Some of these include:

• Homecoming
  
• November
  
• Kid
  
• Hitcher
  
• A selection of poems from Book of Matches.

References

• Faber and Faber biography
• Guardian Books profile

Simon Armitage at www.contemporarywriters.com

Griffin Poetry Prize 2006 keynote speech, including audio clip