The Covid pandemic has very naturally had a different impact on everyone, but for British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage it provoked a simple reaction – he felt completely obliged to express his feelings in the most natural way possible, through his words.
“I felt a duty as Poet Laureate to respond…it was something that couldn’t be swerved,” he says. “I had to engage with it.”
Director Brain Hill’s film A Pandemic Poem: Where Did the World Go? has at its powerful and emotional spine the poetry of Armitage, who is also interviewed to provide context to his words and feelings. In essence, this is an extended poem, set alongside the stories of a handful of people from across the UK who talk about their own experiences of living through the pandemic.
These stories range from a woman who talks to her phone’s video camera as a way of dealing with her young children, to a Welsh landlord constantly looking for ways to keep busy and solvent. We meet a couple dealing with IVF in lockdown and a man having to close down the shoe-shop that has been in his family for 200 years. These are honest, relatable and often very powerful stories…and ones that will strike a chord with people around the world.
To bring Armitage’s poetry to life on screen, director Brian Hill uses a variety of techniques, such as mixing archive footage, musical sequences and contemporary dance. At times moving, at other times poignant, the film attempts to act as a unique record of what will inevitably be the biggest event in the lives of many people living today.
“How did it feel? Like the world had taken a lifetime to open but only a weekend to close,” reads Armitage.
The interviews, dance moments and music are set alongside BBC news footage of the developing pandemic (in one charming sequence, BBC newsreader Sophie Raworth reads lines from Armitage while sat at her newsreaders desk) and footage of empty cities, wild animals reclaiming the streets and skies devoid of aircraft.
The stories veer from stoical humour and gentle optimism through to deep-rooted sadness and resignation to an unknown fate, but thanks to Armitage’s lilting and memorable words and cadence there is an artistic flourish to a film project that could have been profoundly depressing.
With the widespread vaccination programme making an impact, there is a restrained optimism to Armitage’s lines: “the eye of the needle feels like a full stop to all of this.” Perhaps not quite the ‘full stop’ everyone hopes for just yet, but at least a pause for further thought.
UK, 2021, 70mins
Dir Brian Hill
Production Century Films
Producer Mark Cooper-Jones
Cinematography Roger Chapman
Editor Stuart Briggs
Music Fraser T Smith, Duncan Glasson
Poetry Simon Armitage
