Poet
Simms has produced several collections, and more than forty pamphlets, of poetry, inspired by wildlife and the natural world. These works were collected into a series of publications by Shearsman Books. The first publication was Otters and Martens in 2004, followed by The American Poems (2005), Gyrfalcon Poems (2007), Poems from Afghanistan (2013), and Hen Harrier Poems.
In a 2015 Guardian review of Hen Harrier Poems, Simms' poetry of the last half-century was described as of "huge importance, thrilling for the rigour and commitment of its vision". He won third prize in the inaugural Laurel Prize for environmental poetry in 2020, for Hen Harrier. He has also been described as "one of the greatest and most neglected of all Yorkshire’s poets of landscape."
