Wednesday 2 February 2011

Biographical Detail 4 - Simon Armitage

Post one, interesting biographical detail about Simon Armitage.

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17 comments:

  1. This month Simon took up the position Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.

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  2. In 2004, Armitage was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours. He is a vice president of the Poetry Society and a patron of the Arvon Foundation.

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  3. Armitage also writes for radio, television, film and stage. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles.

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  4. Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire in 1963. He studied Geography at Portsmouth, and Psychology at Manchester, qualified as a social worker and worked for six years as a probation officer.

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  5. He was a lecturer of creative writing in Leeds,Iowa and Manchester

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  6. His first novel, Little Green Man, was published by Penguin in 2001

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  7. As a post-graduate student at Manchester University, his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders.

    His 'Book of Matches' have been known to have been studied as part of anthology exams by english students!

    The book of is divided into three sections - the "Book of Matches" which are sonnets, "Becoming of Age" and "Reading the Bans", a series of poems about Armitage's marriage.

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  8. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1988, was named 'Most Promising Young Poet' at the inaugural Forward Poetry Prize in 1992, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 1993, and was Poet in Residence for the New Millennium Experience Company in 1999.

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  9. Armitage worked with young offenders before gaining a postgraduate qualification in social work at Manchester University.

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  10. He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award.

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  12. In 2010, he had 'Seeing Stars' published - described as a 'collection of dramatic monologues, allegories, parables and tall tales'.

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  13. Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in Huddersfield, England. After studying Geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic, he worked with young offenders before gaining a postgraduate qualification in social work at Manchester University. He worked as a probation officer in Oldham until 1994. Was made The Millenium Poet for Great Britain in 2000. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to literature.

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  14. Simon Armitage is a vice president of the Poetry Society and a patron of the Arvon Foundation.

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  15. His first novel, Little Green Man, was published by Penguin in 2001. His second novel, The White Stuff was published in 2004. His other prose work includes the best-selling memoir All Points North, (Penguin 1998) which was the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year.

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  16. Armitage also writes for radio, television, film and stage. He is the author of four stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles. He was commissioned in 2004 by the National Theatre in London to write Eclipse for the Connections series, a play based on the disappearance of a girl in Hebden Bridge at the time of the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall.[4] 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.

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  17. Simon Armitage is currently a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.

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