Simon Armitage was born and grew up in West Yorkshire. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, and has published over a dozen poetry collections, including Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems, and acclaimed medieval translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Owl and the Nightingale. His recent book Blossomise (commissioned by the National Trust) was an instant Sunday Times bestseller. His new books for 2025 are Dwell (May) and New Cemetery (September).
As well as poetry Armitage also writes, records and performs with the band LYR and has received an Ivor Novello Award for his song writing. His book Never Good with Horses features his song lyrics for the first time and celebrates his ear for the music of language.
He is also the author of two novels and three non-fiction bestsellers: All Points North, Walking Home and Walking Away.
A regular broadcaster who writes for television and radio, Armitage presented the popular BBC Radio 4 series The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed and, more recently, My Poetry and Other Animals. An award-winning dramatist, his plays The Last Days of Troy and his contemporary spin on Hansel and Gretel were performed at Shakespeare’s Globe. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. A Vertical Art brings together the vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Oxford Professor of Poetry (2015-2019). In 2019 he was appointed Poet Laureate.
His publisher, Faber & Faber, write as follows about his new book Dwell:
“Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was inspired to write these poems by the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, an ambitious restoration project where history and mystery combine. The reawakened landscape with its woods, meadows and ‘jungle’ offers a bustling, fertile realm for all sorts of creatures to inhabit.
“Armitage uses elements of riddle and folklore to animate a series of dwellings: the ‘twig-and-leaf crow’s-nest squat’ of a squirrel’s drey, a beaver lodge’s ‘spillikin stave church’ and a hive’s ‘reactor core’. Distinctions between human and animal, natural and cultivated, are blurred, emphasising commonality and creating a vibrant account of ‘non-stop stop-motion life’.
“Dwell warns of the fragility of these spaces and their dwellers, exposed to relentless and sadly familiar environmental threats. Just as a garden provides refuge for wildlife, so do these intricate poems offer lasting homes to those who dwell within their lines.”
This edition, signed copies of which will be available to purchase, is beautifully illustrated by Beth Munro, and these illustrations will accompany the talk.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571394470
Simon has a Website 
