Simon Armitage Archive

The Simon Armitage Archive covers Armitage's work as a poet and writer from 1984 to 2015.

This comprehensive archive documents all aspects of Armitage's career as a poet, writer, dramatist, librettist, academic and television and radio presenter. Series are arranged to reflect the variety of his activities.

Armitage's notebooks (BC MS 20c Armitage/2) are grouped together. These most frequently contain drafts for poems, but also document other types of writing. Where identifiable, the poem, collection or work is listed in the catalogue description. Where notebooks are dedicated to a particular work, they are listed with the relevant project files. Loose drafts of early and uncollected material are listed separately (BC MS 20c Armitage/3)

Other series cover Armitage's creative and professional practice. Published Work (BC MS 20c Armitage/1) documents material relating to published poetry collections, works of fiction, travel writing and translation. Radio, televison, drama and commisions (BC MS 20c Armitage/4), and Lectures, articles and reviews (BC MS 20c Armitage/5) are also recorded.

Work relating to Armitage's writing, including teaching, lectureships and poetry readings are kept separately (BC MS 20c Armitage/6).

The collection also includes substantial files of press cuttings and related publicity material (BC MS 20c Armitage/9). Born Digital material, much of which relates to drafting and development of creative work is also listed separately (BC MS 20c Armitage/10)

The collection also includes a substantial series of copies of Armitage's work (often in translation) these are listed separately.

Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire on 26 May 1963. He was educated at Portsmouth Polytechnic (BA Hons, 1984) and the Victoria University of Manchester, where he took a certificate of qualification in social work. He went on to work as a probation officer in Oldham, and later as the poetry editor for Chatto & Windus in London. Armitage has held several academic posts, including as senior lecturer at the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield. In 2015, Armitage was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

Armitage first taught at the University of Leeds in the early 1990s. He returned to the University in 2017, becoming Leeds first Professor of Poetry.

Armitage's first full-length collection of poetry, 'Zoom!', was published in 1989 by Bloodaxe Books. Since this time he has published numerous volumes of poetry; his twentieth collection 'The Unaccompanied' was published in 2017. Armitage has also written extensively for television, film and theatre and published several prose works. He has made literary, history and travel programmes for BBC Radios 3 and 4; and has written and presented a number of TV documentaries.

He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes, a Lannan Award and the Keats- Shelley Poetry Prize. In 2012, at the 25th Hay Festival, he was presented with the Hay Medal for Poetry. Armitage won the 2017 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation for his reworking of the medieval poem, Pearl. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the recipient of an Ivor Novello Award for song-writing, a BAFTA and a CBE for services to poetry. He is a vice president of the Poetry Society and a patron of the Arvon Foundation.

This collection is subject to various access conditions. Please see individual catalogue descriptions for further details on access.

Purchased from Simon Armitage, 31 July 1995 and 12 August 1998.

In English.

Contents lists for many of the files can be found in the files themselves.