Biography of Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage (born in Huddersfield on May 26, 1963) is a British poet, playwright, and novelist. Armitage studied at the University of Portsmouth, and has lectured on creative writing at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, where he lives, and at the University of Iowa's writers' workshop. He currently teaches at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published nine volumes of poetry, including All Points North (1999), a collection of essays on the north of England, and two novels, Little Green Man and The Dead Sea Poems (2001) and White Stuff (2004). He has also produced a dramatised version of Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poetry called Tyrannosaurus Rex vs The Corduroy Kid, both of which were published in July 2006. Most recently he wrote the libretto for an opera scored by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae, The Assassin Tree, based on a Greek myth recounted in The Golden Bough. The opera premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival on the 25th of August, before moving to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on the 6th of September