Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is the current poet laureate of the United Kingdom (2019-2029). Among other things he is also an author, translator, musician, playwright and Professor of Poetry at Leeds University. 

After studying geography and social work Simon Armitage published his first poetry collection in 1989 and continued working as a probation officer in Greater Manchester until 1994. 

Armitage has published dozens of poetry collections, among which are Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems (2020), a collection of poems written throughout his life that are concerned with places in his hometown in West Yorkshire, and Blossomise (2023), which was an instant Sunday Times bestseller. He has translated classical poetry and verse, such as the medieval poems Pearl, for which he was awarded the PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which received critical acclaim. His adaptations of Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad were performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. 

Simon Armitage also engages in interdisciplinary collaborations. In 2012, he joined forces with local expert Tom Lonsdale and letter-carver Pip Hall to carve his poems onto stones at secluded sites along the Stanza Stones Trail. 

He has received numerous literary prizes, including an Ivor Novello Award and a BAFTA for Feltham Sings in 2003, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for his oeuvre in 2018.