The judges of the Christopher Tower Prizes 2008 are Simon Armitage, Alan Jenkins, and Peter McDonald.

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage,  born in Huddersfield in 1963, is the best-known British poet of his generation.  He is a prolific writer, who has also worked in the genres of fiction and drama, and has been the author of notable translations and adaptations.  Since Zoom! (1989) he has published many acclaimed books of poetry, including The Book of Matches (1993), The Dead Sea Poems (1995), The Universal Home Doctor (2002) and most recently Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid (2006).  His Selected Poems appeared in 2001, and his translations of The Odyssey and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 2006.  Simon’s other work includes the novels Little Green Man (2001) and The White Stuff (2004), as well as the book of essays All Points North (1998) and (in collaboration with Glyn Maxwell) Moon Country (1996).

Alan Jenkins

Alan Jenkins was born in 1955 in Surrey, and he grew up in London.  He is a widely acclaimed and admired poet, whose books are The Hot-House (1988), Greenheart (1990), Harm (1994) (winner of the Forward Prize), The Drift (2000) (shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize) and, most recently, A Shorter Life (2005) (shortlisted for the Forward Prize).    Alan has worked for many years for the Times Literary Supplement, where he is Deputy Editor.

Peter McDonald