*Edges out Wole Soyinka and three other contenders
*Soyinka congratulates him
Simon Robert Armitage, 52 , an English poet, playwright and novelist was, on 19 June 2015, elected Oxford Professor of Poetry.
He succeeded Geoffrey Hill. Others who contested for the position are: Professor Wole Soyinka, Ian Gregson, Seán Haldane and A E Stallings.
Armitage was born on born 26 May 1963 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire; and grew up in the village of Marsden. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic.
He was a post-graduate student at the University of Manchester where his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders.
Until 1994 he worked as Probation Officer in Greater Manchester. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 1996 from the University of Portsmouth. He then lectured on creative writing at the University of Leeds, the University of Iowa and Manchester Metropolitan University. He has made literary, history and travel programmes for BBC Radios 3 and 4; and since 1996 he has written and presented a number of TV documentaries. In February 2011 he became Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.
Armitage’s poetry collections include Book of Matches (1993) and The Dead Sea Poems (1995). He has written two novels, Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as All Points North (1998), a collection of essays on Northern England. He produced a dramatised version of Homer’s Odyssey and a collection of poetry entitled Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid (which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), both of which were published in July 2006.
Many of Armitage’s poems appear in the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include “Homecoming”,”Extract from Out of the Blue”, “November”, “Kid”, “Hitcher”, and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these “Mother any distance…”
Soyinka Congratulates Him
“The votes have been cast, and the new Oxford Professor of Poetry elected. I raise a huge goblet to my main sponsor, Professor Lucy Newlyn – upon whom I have bestowed the title of Eleto Ab’ija N’badi – Strategic Grand Marshal – and to her creative team of campaigners and supporters, her family and all. They all share the responsibility for getting me truly caught up in the excitement generated by this historic union of the poetic and democratic Muses. As we say at home, may their shadows never shrink.
“(Mind you, if only they’d allowed me to import a small team of our seasoned electoral jugglers from the home front….ah well!)
“I must now concede a secret regret! What I had wistfully nursed as my “Derek Walcott” agenda must sadly be relinquished. In my view, one of the three most invigorating poets of this age, acceptance of my own nomination – as I frankly admitted to my sponsors – was significantly propelled by the thought of “serving out his time”, Derek’s candidature, as we all recall, having been thwarted by some lamentably unpoetic conduct in that campaign. All that, however, in the chronicles of the past.
“Finally, from the rockhills of Abeokuta to the wilds of Yorkshire, to which I was adopted native so many years ago, a hand across time and distance to Simon Armitage. May his inspiration never run dry.”