Showing results by author "Simon Armitage" in All Categories

In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256 mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.

Gilgamesh originated in Ancient Mesopotamia nearly 4,000 years ago, yet its themes of power, loyalty, love and loss resound with contemporary relevance. The eponymous demigod tyrannically rules the kingdom of Uruk. To establish peace, the gods create his counterpart, the wild man Enkidu, and the two embark on a series of extraordinary adventures. But after tragedy strikes, Gilgamesh sets out alone on a desperate quest for immortality leading him to the very edge of the world . . .

Lily Cole stars as Helen of Troy, ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’, in Simon Armitage’s vivid, visceral adaptation of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. For 10 years, the Greeks have been laying siege to Troy to win back their abducted queen, Helen. But as the war drags on, and the battlefields run scarlet with blood, the opposing forces are entrenched in a bitter stalemate. As gods and mortals squabble amongst themselves for the spoils of war, the exhausted warriors go to extreme lengths in a desperate grab for victory....

When the mysterious Green Knight arrives unbidden at the Round Table one Christmas, only Gawain is brave enough to take up his challenge.... This story, first told in the 1400s, is one of the most enthralling, dramatic and beloved poems in the English tradition. Now, in Simon Armitage, the poem has found its perfect modern translator. Armitage's retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures all of the magic and wonderful storytelling of the original while also revitalising it.

Drawing upon all of his award-winning poetry collections, including Kid, Book of Matches, The Universal Home Doctor, Seeing Stars and The Unaccompanied, as well as his medieval translations and verse dramas, Paper Aeroplane represents a generous and thrilling gathering of work from one of contemporary poetry's most essential voices.

A combination of verse from Simon Armitage and prose from Jeff Young lends a voice to the chain of events depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry. This production chronicles the history surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the ascension of Duke William of Normandy to the English throne. Harold, Duke of Wessex, takes the English throne, despite Edward the Confessor's wish that William Duke of Normandy should be his heir.

With their epic tales of gods, heroes, magic and monsters, the Greek myths have thrilled us for more than 2,000 years and inspired countless adaptations. Now, in this captivating collection, two award-winning playwrights bring their own fresh, contemporary takes to the famous legends of Odysseus, Orpheus and Eurydice.

The conversion of a local beauty spot into a municipal graveyard is the starting point for New Cemetery. From regular walks around the boundary near his moorland home in West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage chronicles the extraordinary transformation of landscape both outer and inner. These luminous and wry poems—composed in short-lined tercets—reflect the changing world: one of unstable weather patterns and unpredictable news events, all observed across a few acres of Pennine upland.

Simon Armitage invites you to step inside his writing shed, nestled in the hills of West Yorkshire, for an intimate and uplifting celebration of conversation and creativity conducted over a proper brew. He's ready to welcome an eclectic mix of guests in for a natter, with delightfully meandering conversations ranging across the personal and the poetic. Each episode features a tea-break courtesy of friends and partners Yorkshire Tea, and sees Simon present his guests with not only their choice of biscuits but also a hand-picked selection from the ancient poem he’s been translating, Gilgamesh,...

Following the success of his acclaimed translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl, Simon Armitage shines light on another jewel of Middle English verse. In his thoroughly enjoyable version, Armitage communicates the energy, charm and humour of the tale - the earliest example of a 'debate poem'. An unnamed narrator overhears a fierce verbal contest between the two eponymous birds, which moves entertainingly from the eloquent and highfalutin to the ribald and ridiculous.

An age-old subject is given new perspectives in Blossomise, a collection with change at its heart. Blossomise celebrates the ecstatic arrival of spring blossom just as it acknowledges, too, its melancholic disappearance. From a crashed Ford Capri wrapped around the immovable trunk of a cherry tree, to saplings flourishing among skyscrapers and urban sprawl, the fizz and froth of the annual blossom display is explored here both as an exuberant emblem of the natural world and a nervous marker of our vulnerable climate.

Over the course of several years, Simon Armitage has written hundreds of poems for various projects, commissions, collaborations and events, which stand outside of his mainstream collections but now form a substantial body of work in their own right. They vary from single poems, such as 'Zodiac T Shirt', written to be performed at the launch of Beck's Song Reader, to the suite of 10 poems about Branwell Brontë written at the time of the writer's bicentenary.

ONE OF THE BEST POETRY BOOKS OF THE YEAR FROM THE GUARDIAN AND THE OBSERVER From the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, a poem sequence that considers our use of the land that surrounds him, and recounts the personal tales of beauty and loss that play out on it A few years ago, in the...