Distinguished Visitor Public Lecture: Simon Armitage

Professor Simon Armitage

Originally a probation officer, Simon Armitage is an award-winning British poet, playwright, novelist, lyricist and broadcaster, who also writes extensively for television and radio. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 2015. 

Armitage has won numerous accolades, including the international PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and a prestigious Ivor Novello Award for his song lyrics in the television film about young offenders in prison, Feltham Sings. His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare's Globe in London. 

Armitage’s new eleventh collection of poetry, The Unaccompanied, documents a world on the brink. His acclaimed translation of the medieval English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has sold over one hundred thousand copies. 

Armitage is also the author of two best-selling memoirs, Walking Home and Walking Away, about walking through Britain as a modern-day troubadour. A Sunday Times Top 10 title, Walking Home has just been published in Chinese by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. 

Armitage was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004 and awarded the C.B.E for services to British poetry in 2010.  www.simonarmitage.com and Instagram: simonarmitage_official