lift the lapis lazuli tablet and readof Gilgamesh - hisadventures and all he endured.King above kings, most formidable presence.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...

lift the lapis lazuli tablet and readof Gilgamesh - his adventures and all he endured.King above kings, most formidable presence.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 ex...

Edited by Sarah Crown, Martin Prendergast & Nicholas SerotaFeaturing: Carlos Acosta CBE, Naomi Alderman, Simon Armitage, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Ann Dinsdale , James Graham , David Harewood, Darren Henley CBE, Lubaina Himid CBE RA, Sarah Housley , Sam Jackson , Nigel Higgins , David Joseph CBE, Daljit Nagra , Dave Moutrey OBE, Jacqui O’Hanlon , Amanda Parker , Jess Prendergrast, Chris Riddell , Bobby Seagull, Nicholas Serota , Jack Stilgoe , Annabel Turpin & Jo Verrent

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 theYorkshire village where he was born.Travelling as a 'modern troubadour' without a penny in his...

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 rev...

Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining Walking Home, the restless poet has followed up that journey with a walk of the same distance but through the very opposite terrain and direction far from home.In Walking Away Simon Armitage swaps the moorland uplands of the north for the coastal fringes of Britain's south west, once again giving readings every night, but this time throug...

'A joy. Celebrates the real world and revels in its mad glory' Sue Townsend, Sunday Times_____________________________________All Points North is part-memoir and part-excursion. Charting the rugged and uneven terrain of a writer's formative years - from tax problems to probation to American tours, football to family to running away to Iceland - Simon Armitage explores growing up...

The Alliterative Morte Arthure - the title given to a four-thousand line poem written sometime around 1400 - was part of a medieval Arthurian revival which produced such masterpieces as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Thomas Malory's prose Morte D'Arthur.Like Gawain, the Alliterative Morte Arthure is a unique manuscript (held in the library of Lincoln Cathedral) by an anonymous author, and written in alliterating lines w...

When Simon Armitage burst on to the poetry scene in 1989 with his spectacular debut Zoom!, readers were introduced to an exceptional new talent who would reshape the landscape of contemporary poetry in the years to come. Now, twenty-five years on, Simon Armitage's reputation as one of the nation's most original, most respected and best-loved poets seems secure. Paper Aeroplane: Poems 1989-2014 is the author's own selection from across a quarter-century of work, from his d...

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 rev...

WINNER OF THE HOLYER AN GOF PUBLISHERS AWARD FOR POETRYThis gorgeously illustrated collection of poems illuminates and reimagines the ingenious, fragile dwellings of the living creatures around us.Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was inspired to write these poems by the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, an ambitious restoration project where history and mystery coexist. The reawakened landscape with its woods, meadows and 'jungle' offers a bustling, fertile ...

'Extremely funny' Sunday Telegraph_____________________________A poet is a rock star without the sex'n'drugs, or the rock'n'roll. But that never stopped Simon Armitage dreaming, and in Gig, he explores how music and the muse intertwine in work and in life. Crammed with stories, anecdotes, jokes, absurdities, the odd informal homily, pitfalls and pratfalls (not all the author's own), Yorkshire life and death, Gig is about the dream ...