Emirates Literature Foundation Blog (ELF)

Meet the 2016 Authors – Simon Armitage

What are you most looking forward to at the 2016 Festival?Simon-Armitage---Credit-Paul-Wolfgang-WebsterSome sun – it’s the season of mist here.  And hearing other writers, and meeting far flung readers. When did you realise you wanted to be a writer? When I was 15 and started reading Ted Hughes’ poems, and hearing him give a reading at an old cinema in Hebden Bridge. What book do you find yourself re-reading most often? These days, Virgil’s Aeneid. If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? A photographer.  I guess I’d have to buy a camera? And finally, we have a number of aspiring writers attending the Festival. What one piece of advice would you give them? There’s only one golden rule: read.