Not just anyone can update “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” one of English literature’s oldest works — originally written in Middle English — into modern verse. And not just anyone can do that with an eye towards liberating it from scholars and academics to make it accessible to readers of every caste.

Of course, Simon Armitage, who will be reading from his works at Olsson’s Old Town tonight, isn’t just anyone.

In Britain, where they take their poetry — and their poets — more seriously than we do here, Simon Armitage is already an institution: widely heralded as the heir apparent to Philip Larkin, Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, collections that he began publishing back in 1989 while working as a probation officer in Manchester, collections that quickly and easily established his reputation as one of the best poets in Britain. Proud of his Northern England, West Yorkshire, working-class origins, Armitage is no rebel when it comes to poetic tradition, however. He works easily and comfortably in the verse forms that have shaped English poetry for the last seven centuries. And yet the lyric quality of his verse is often contrasted with unsettling and unsentimental subject matter.

DCist managed to corner Armitage for a brief interview about his latest poetic endeavor and his work in general: