‘I’m more optimistic’: poet laureate Simon Armitage tells of Britain’s great ordeal

The writer has blended music, dance and words into a film tracing the pandemic

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How to tell millions of individual stories? Or represent the pain and anxiety of a pandemic to audiences of the future? Perhaps it takes a national poet to attempt it.

Speaking exclusively to the Observer, Simon Armitage, the poet laureate, and his long-time collaborator, the award-winning British filmmaker Brian Hill, have revealed they are quietly tackling this challenge together.