Page 30 - We'll Sing Coverage Book

with Armitage last month. Not only has this choir had to contend with restrictions on
public singing, but it has also suffered the loss of two members to the virus. Armitage
wrote lyrics for the choir to sing, including Lyrics for Huddersfield, with the refrain:
“Till the world discovers its voice again we’ll sing, we’ll sing”, and The Songthrush and
the Mountain Ash, about a visit to an uncomprehending care resident:

“Through the hospital window

she asked again

why I stood outside

in the wind and rain,

and said she didn’t

understand

why I didn’t want

to touch her hand.”

“We decided to put some modern dance to this music for our film because dancers have
also been so affected,” said Hill, who runs Century Films and who also recently worked
on the acclaimed BBC4 lockdown film Unprecedented. “Simon has written about his own
thoughts and will also pick up on the themes from the stories we have encountered. We
are also using archive footage so there will be some past-tense moments, looking at the
early news from Wuhan, China, and what we felt then.”

Shooting the film has inevitably been stop-start. “We have had to cancel some things,”
said Armitage. “Most recently we had arranged an event in London where people were
wearing masks, rather like a masked ball. We could have continued with it, as it was
work, but we felt we should leave it until people felt more at ease.”

Armitage said he makes no clear distinction in his writing between his own experience
of the pandemic and those of others. “They overlap,” he said. “I often bring myself into
my poetry, and in fact I haven’t yet got to that element of the film where I write in
response to others. It is not all in the first person but it is a personal perspective. I have
written about a third of it so far, and that will the very last part.”

Armitage said the main poem will act as “a bit of a speaking clock, voicing the whole”.

His writing so far has been largely prompted by news coverage, and he has felt the need
to regain balance by drawing away at times and reading about other things. “A book can
give perspective by showing this is not the worst that has happened.”

But, even though he is the royally appointed poet, he does not feel any pressure to raise
national morale by painting a rosy picture: “I’m no cheerleader. I haven’t got the pom-
poms. But I do think people find resilience from emotional truth.”