Born in West Yorkshire, England, Simon Armitage has a degree in social work and worked as a probation officer in Manchester, England in the 1980s. Armitage is known for his distinctly northern British vernacular and dry wit; in Contemporary Poets, Brian Macaskill notes that Armitage’s poetry brings to mind “Philip Larkin’s late-career use of vernacular, slang locutions, and telling obscenities, Armitage often turns the commonplace or, especially, the vulgar phrase to epigrammatic effect.” In 1999, the New Millennium Experience Company commissioned Armitage to write Killing Time in celebration of the new millennium.