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L is for The Linen Hall
Simon Armitage will read with award-winning poet Leontia Flynn in a celebration with local student and community groups and members of the public at The Linen Hall, the oldest library in Belfast and last subscription library in Ireland. Accessible to all and renowned for its Irish and local studies collections, the library, as part of the event, will reflect the alphabet theme of the tour by displaying its unique Robert McAdam Comparative Lexicon (c.1885), handwritten volumes of Irish words and their equivalents in 28 other languages, from Scottish to Manx Gaelic to Sanskrit.
Simon Armitage was born and grew up in West Yorkshire. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the PEN Prize for Translation. He has published over a dozen poetry collections, including Magnetic Field: the Marsden Poems, and acclaimed medieval translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Owl and the Nightingale. His recent book Blossomise was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and his new book Dwell is out in May 2025. Armitage also writes, records and performs with the band LYR and has received an Ivor Novello Award for his song writing. His book Never Good with Horses features his song lyrics for the first time and celebrates his ear for the music of language. He is the author of two novels and three non-fiction bestsellers: All Points North, Walking Home and Walking Away. A regular broadcaster, who also writes for television and radio, Armitage presented the popular BBC Radio 4 series The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed. An award-winning dramatist, his plays The Last Days of Troy and a new dystopian version of Hansel and Gretel were performed at Shakespeare’s Globe. Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. A Vertical Art brings together the vibrant and engaging lectures from his tenure as Oxford Professor of Poetry (2015-2019). He was appointed Poet Laureate in 2019. www.simonarmitage.co.uk
Leontia Flynn has published five collections of poetry. She has been described as ‘a poet who is not only one of the best writers of her generation but who seems, more and more, to be the voice of that generation’ (John McAuliffe, Irish Times), and her work as ‘a triumph of poetic innovation’ (Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado, Dublin Review of Books). Flynn has won the Forward prize for best First Collection, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Times Poetry Prize and a Cholomondeley award, and has twice been nominated for the T S Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection, Taking Liberties, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2023. She was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022 and is Professor at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University.
Booking is essential for all events including free events. All event tickets are non-refundable. Please view our Customer Service Policy.