Simon was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. A recipient of numerous prizes and awards, his poetry collections include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). He writes extensively for television and radio, and is the author of two novels and the non-fiction bestsellers All Points North (1998), Walking Home (2012) and Walking Away (2015). His theatre works include The Last Days of Troy, performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2014. A Vertical Art (2021) brought together his vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, and, in 2018, he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Simon Armitage is Poet Laureate.