Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, a village in West Yorkshire, England. He was named UK Poet Laureate in 2019. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Armitage was named the Millennium Poet in 1999, a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature in 2004, and a Commander of the British Empire in 2010. In 2014 he was awarded the Cholmondeley Award. Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including
Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems (2020);
Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019);
The Unaccompanied (2017);
Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989–2014 (2014);
Seeing Stars (2010);
Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006);
The Shout: Selected Poems (2005), which was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award;
Kid (1992), which won the Forward Prize; and his first collection,
Zoom! (1989), a Poetry Society Book Choice. Several of his collections have also been short-listed for the Whitbread Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has won an Eric Gregory Award and a Lannan Award, and was chosen as a
Sunday Times Author of the Year. (
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