Literary Birthday – 26 May – Simon Armitage

Happy Birthday, Simon Armitage, born on 26 May 1963.

Simon Armitage Quotes

1. People who read poetry, for example, like the feel, the heft and the smell of a book.
2. We don’t know where print is going.
3. It’s never going to be very mainstream. One reason is that poetry requires concentration, both on the part of the writer and the reader. But it’s kind of unkillable, poetry. It’s our most ancient artform and I think it’s more relevant today than ever, because it’s one person saying what they really believe.
4. We still need a voice that thinks before it speaks.
5. I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task-based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.
6. I’ve always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.
7. Prose fills a space, like a liquid poured in from the top, but poetry occupies it, arrays itself in formation, sets up camp and refuses to budge.

Simon Armitage is an award-winning British poet, playwright, and novelist. He is known for poems about modern life written in everyday language. His poetry often uses dark, dry humour and focuses on life in modern Britain. He was appointed Poet Laureate of Great Britain on 10 May 2019. His poetry collections include Book of Matches and The Dead Sea Poems. He has written two novels, Little Green Man and The White Stuff, as well as All Points North, a collection of essays on the north of England, and Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey. His 2016 translation of the medieval English poem ‘Pearl’ won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Armitage was awarded the CBE for services to poetry in 2010 and was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2018.

Source for image: Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Krankenhaus_Simon_Armitage_(48710400372)_(cropped).jpg

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar

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