Armitage was born in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire,[2][3] and grew up in the village of Marsden, where his family still live.[4] He has an older sister, Hilary. His father Peter was a former electrician, probation officer and firefighter who was well known locally for writing plays and pantomimes for his all-male panto group, The Avalanche Dodgers.[4][5]
He wrote his first poem aged 10 as a school assignment.[4] Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic. He was a postgraduate student at the University of Manchester, where his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders. Finding himself jobless after graduation, he decided to train as a probation officer, like his father before him. Around this time he began writing poetry more seriously,[4] though he continued to work as a probation officer in Greater Manchester until 1994.[6]
