Simon Armitage was elected Oxford Professor of Poetry from 2015 - 2019, and in May 2019 was appointed UK Poet Laureate. He has published twelve full-length award-winning collections, most recently Paper Aeroplane, Selected Poems 1989 - 2014 (Fabers, 2014) and Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (Faber, 2019). His medieval translations include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl which won the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He is a broadcaster, playwright, novelist and the author of three best-selling volumes of non-fiction. Simon was made CBE for Services to Poetry in 2015 and in 2018 was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.
