About Simon Armitage
Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poetry, starting with Zoom! in 1989. Many of his poems concern his home town of Marsden in West Yorkshire; these are collected in Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems. He has translated classic poems including the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and has dramatised the Odyssey. He has written several travel books including Moon Country and Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way. He has edited poetry anthologies including one on the work of Ted Hughes. He has participated in numerous television and radio documentaries, dramatisations, and travelogues. Armitage's first book-length poetry collection Zoom! was published in 1989.
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