The Yorkshireman - who is also a novelist, former probation officer, broadcaster, playwright, documentary film maker, band member and DJ - is joined by guests such as Kate Tempest, Antony Gormley, Lily Cole, Maxine Peake, Guy Garvey and more in the 12-part BBC Radio 4 series which starts on Wednesday March 11.

Listeners will be able to download episodes of The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed, produced by Sue Roberts, from BBC Sounds.

Simon Armitage and the poetry of Leeds

Simon Armitage in his garden shed, from which he will host a new podcast. Picture: BBC.

He also recently announced an intention to open a new National Poetry Centre in Leeds.The Marsden native said: "It's been a great pleasure and great fun to throw open the doors (ok, door) of the shed to so many creative and inspiring visitors.

"I think most of them thought the shed was just a metaphor for something more comfortable or literary. But it's an actual shed, with spiders and a lawnmower."

Surrounded by the Pennines, Armitage talks with his guests about music, art, sheds, sherry and his latest poetic undertaking, a translation of the Middle English poem The Owl And The Nightingale.

Guests include acclaimed spoken word performer Kate Tempest, Turner Prize recipient Antony Gormley, model and actress Lily Cole, DJ and Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, actress Maxine Peake, poet Jackie Kay and world-record beat-boxing champion, Testament.

Queen Elizabeth presents Simon Armitage with the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry upon his appointment as Poet Laureate during an audience at Buckingham Palace, London. Credit: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire.

Sam Lee, the Mercury Prize short-listed folk singer, tries to get the poet out of the shed to join one of his trips in the woods to sing with Nightingales, and Trinidadian judge Melanie Plimmer "casts a judicious eye over the arguments of the two poetic birds," says the broadcaster.

"The shed brings out something different, it’s a disarming and comforting space with a welcoming vibe all of its own."

Armitage has written extensively for radio, television, stage and film and produced two novels, an opera libretto and two best-selling non-fiction books.

He is a prize-winning author of 12 collections of poetry - his first, Zoom, appeared in 1989, his most recent, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, was published by Faber last May, the same month he was appointed as laureate - a moniker he keeps for a decade.

Armitage graduated from Portsmouth University, where he studied geography, and as a post-graduate student at Manchester University, his MA thesis focused on the effects of television violence on young offenders.

Until 1994 he worked as a probation officer in Greater Manchester.

He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and was elected to serve as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford between 2015 and 2019.

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage to host new BBC podcast from his Holme Valley garden shed