SIMON Armitage has graced many a Wordsworth Trust poetry event, going way back to the revered reign of the late, great, trust director Robert Woof.

Since Robert got the Wordsworth Trust's season of poetry readings going in the 1990s, the Grasmere series has celebrated a huge and diverse range of contemporary poetry penned by both the internationally-renowned and up and coming. Not least, Simon, who was the official Millennium poet; in 2010 was awarded the CBE for services to poetry and this month appointed to one of the highest offices in literature, Poet Laureate.

Although these days poetry readings still play a major and popular part of the trust's year on year events programme, due to challenges on the funding front the acclaimed weekly Tuesday night readings during summer were curtailed several years ago.

An Evening with Simon Armitage is held on Tuesday, August 13 (7.30pm) at The Daffodil Hotel’s Waterside Room, with stunning views of the lake and surrounding fells and a mere stone’s throw away from Dove Cottage, where William Wordsworth wrote some of his finest poetry.

Award-winning poet, playwright and novelist, Simon was born in 1963 in the village of Marsden, near Huddersfield, and still lives in West Yorkshire. He is a graduate of Portsmouth University, where he studied geography. As a post graduate student at Manchester University, his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders. Until 1994 he worked as a probation officer in Greater Manchester.

He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and was elected to serve as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford for 2015-2019. In spring 2019, he held the post of Holmes Visiting Professor at Princeton University, USA.

Previously, he taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and Manchester Metropolitan University before his 2011 appointment as Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield and Visiting Professor at the University of Falmouth.

The Robert Woof Director of the Wordsworth Trust, Michael McGregor, said that the annual poetry reading by Simon is always a highlight of the trust’s year: "His recent appointment as Poet Laureate makes it even more special. I’m sure that Wordsworth (a previous Poet Laureate) would heartily approve."

Down the years, Simon's received scores of awards for his poetry, including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes, an Eric Gregory Award, a major Lannan Award, a Cholmondeley Award, the Spoken Word Award (Gold), the Ivor Novello Award for song-writing, BBC Radio Best Speech Programme, Television Society Award for Documentary and Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. He also landed the 2017 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation and was awarded the 2018 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry.

On August 13, Simon will be reading from a selection of his most loved work and his streetwise humour, inventive use of conversational speech and eye for the ordinary detail will no doubt make the evening an unforgettable experience; one that Robert Woof would have loved. Tickets online at wordsworth.org.uk/events/an-evening-with-simon-armitage.