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Simon Armitage 06/12/2008
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. It is published by Faber and Faber in May 2006 and by Norton in the US. 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 is currently a senior lecturer 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 was 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.
His latest collection of poems, Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid is published by Faber and faber in September 2006.
Longer biography
Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in the village of Marsden and lives in West Yorkshire. He is a graduate of Portsmouth University, where he studied Geography. As a post-graduate student at Manchester University his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders. Until 1994 he worked as Probation Officer in Greater Manchester.
His first collection of poems, Zoom!, was published in 1989 by Bloodaxe Books. Further collections are Xanadu (1992, Bloodaxe Books), Kid (1992, Faber & Faber), Book of Matches (1993, Faber & Faber), The Dead Sea Poems (1995, Faber & Faber), CloudCuckooLand (1997 Faber and Faber), Killing Time (1999 Faber & Faber), Selected Poems (2001, Faber & Faber), Travelling Songs (2002, Faber & Faber), The Universal Home Doctor (2002, Faber & Faber) and Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006, Faber & Faber). He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a 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.
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, and Jerusalem, commissioned by West Yorkshire Playhouse. His recent dramatisation of The Odyssey, commissioned by the BBC, was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2004 and released on CD through BBC Worldwide. It received the Gold Award at the 2005 Spoken Word Awards. The book, Homer’s Odyssey – A Retelling, is published by Faber and Faber (2006) in the UK and by Norton in the US. For over ten years he has been a regular guest of The Mark Radcliffe Show, first on BBC Radio 1 and more recently on BBC Radio 2. His many contributions to BBC Radio 4 include his co-hosting of Armitage and Moore’s Guide to Popular Song and as a reviewer for the weekly arts programme Front Row.
Simon Armitage has written for over a dozen television films, and with director Brian Hill pioneered the docu-musical format which lead to such cult films as Drinking for England and Song Birds. Song Birds was screened at the Sun Dance Film Festival in 2006. He received an Ivor Novello Award for his song-lyrics in the Channel 4 film Feltham Sings, which also won a BAFTA. He wrote the libretto for the opera The Assassin Tree, composed by Stuart McRae, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006.
His first novel, Little Green Man, was published by Penguin in 2001. His second novel, The White Stuff was published in 2004. His other prose work includes the best-selling memoir All Points North, (Penguin 1998) which was the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year.
Simon Armitage 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. 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 was published in the US in April 2005 by Harcourt. It was short-listed for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award. His translation of the middle English classic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, was commissioned by Faber & Faber in the UK and Norton in the US and published in 2007.
He has served as a judge for the Forward Prize, the T.S Eliot Prize, the Whitbread Prize, the Griffin Prize, and in 2006 was a judge for the Man Booker Prize.
Awards
1988 Eric Gregory Award
1992 One of the First Forward Poetry Prizes for Kid
1993 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
1994 Lannan Award
1998 Yorkshire Post Book of the Year for All Points North
2003 BAFTA winner
2003 Ivor Novello Award for songwriting
2004 Fellow of Royal Society for Literature
2005 Spoken Word Award (Gold) for The Odyssey
Zoom! was a Poetry Book Society Choice.
Kid was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize.
The Dead Sea Poems was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize.
Killing Time is the one-thousand line poem commissioned by the New Millennium Experience Company.
The Universal Home Doctor was shortlisted for the T.S Eliot Prize.
The Shout was shortlisted for the Nation Book Critics Circle Award (US).
The Dead Sea Poems
And I was travelling lightly, barefoot
over bedrock, then through lands that were stitched
with breadplant and camomile. Or was it
burdock. For a living I was driving
a river of goats towards clean water,
when one of the herd cut loose to a cave
on the skyline. To flush it out, I shaped
a sling from a length of cotton bandage,
or was it a blanket, then launched a rock
at the target, which let out a racket -
the tell-tale sound of man-made objects.
Inside the cave like a set of skittles
stood a dozen caskets, and each one gasped -
a little theatrically perhaps -
when opened, then gave out a breath of musk
and pollen, and reaching down through cool sand
I found poems written in my own hand.
Being greatly in need of food and clothing,
and out of pockets, I let the lot go
for twelve times nothing, but saw them again
this spring, on public display, out of reach
under infra-red and ultra-sonic,
apparently worth an absolute packet.
Knowing now the price of my early art
I have gone some way towards taking it all
to heart, by bearing it all in mind, like
praying, saying it over and over
at night, by singing the whole of the work
to myself, every page of that innocent,
everyday, effortless verse, of which this
is the first.
Selected works
- 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)
Many of Armitage's poems now appear in the GCSE syllabus for English literature in the UK. Some of these include: "Homecoming","The Convergence of the Twain","November", "Kid", "Hitcher", and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these "Mother any distance...".
Links
Simon Armitage's website
Simon Armitage at www.contemporarywriters.com
Griffin Poetry Prize 2006 keynote speech, including audio clip
sonnets.org interview (01/2002)
Guardian interview (07/2001)
helium.com an analysis of "Mother"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Armitage
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