Context
The poet as a young man
Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in West Yorkshire.
He studied Geography at Portsmouth University and completed an MA at Manchester, where he wrote his dissertation on the effects of television violence on young offenders.
Afterwards he worked as a probation officer. This job influenced many of the poems in Zoom!, his first collection which was published in 1989.
He then had various other jobs, including DJ and shelf stacker.
Wordplay and roots
Many of Armitage's poems contain puns and other wordplay. His poetry demonstrates a strong concern for social issues, as well as drawing on his Yorkshire roots.
He likes to use the Yorkshire dialectLanguage that is specific to a place or region. and is interested in different dialects and slang. He writes about everyday events in a thought provoking way.
Armitage is often noted for his ‘ear’ - he has a strong sense of rhythmA strong pattern of words, sounds, musical notes or movement found in poetry, music and dance., metreThe pattern of stresses in a line of poetry, which make up the rhythm of the line. and voice.
Favourite themes
Family is an important topic, as is music. He likes to look at personal relationships, frequently drawing on his own life experience.
He often uses the monologueA speech by a single person, speaking alone, often revealing something about their past or personality. form in his poetry to create immediate and moving characters. His delivery is deadpanThe deliberate display of a serious manner or calm detachment hiding the fact that you are joking or teasing someone, or to contrast with the ridiculousness of the subject matter. and sometimes darkly humorous.
Writing credits
Armitage is not solely a poet. He has written scripts for film, television and radio as well as fiction and non-fiction books. He pens the lyrics for his band - The Scaremongers – and he wrote the librettoThe lyrics used for an opera or oratorio. for the opera, The Assassin Tree.
He has also translated the Middle English Middle English was spoken and written in England from around the years 1100 to 1500. tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Homer's Odyssey from the original Greek.
Armitage was made a CBECommander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an honour awarded to an individual by the Queen. It is a reward for contributions to the arts and sciences, public service and work with charitable and welfare organisations. for services to poetry in 2010. He was elected Oxford University's Professor of Poetry in 2015.
He lives in Yorkshire, dividing his time between writing and broadcasting.