In conversation with the team behind A Pandemic Poem: Where Did the World Go?

In March 2020, director Brian Hill got in touch with the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and suggested they make a film together about the pandemic that was unfolding across the world. The two have worked together on numerous occasions, producing films such as BAFTA winning Feltham Sings, Songbirds, Drinking For England and The Not Dead. They’d tackled subjects as diverse as prison, mental health, addiction and trauma. Now there was an opportunity to make a film about the biggest event of all our lives.

The film was commissioned by the BBC and features a long form poem as the narrative spine. Around the poetry, a number of people  offer testimony about their own experiences during the pandemic: the man who lost his business, the woman who lost her mother, the pub landlord who fed thousands, the lockdown mum who vividly brings to life the experience of looking after toddlers all…