Poet laureate Simon Armitage has written a poem for World Cancer Day, commissioned by Yorkshire Cancer Research to mark its centenary year. Armitage, who admitted he had previously shied away from the subject, described the commission as “daunting” but said it forced him to confront the realities of the disease.
Titled The Campaign, the poem draws on a metaphor from the charity’s first honorary secretary, Sir Harold Mackintosh, who in 1926 called for Yorkshire to “slay the dragon” of cancer. Armitage met with 17 people affected by cancer at the charity’s Harrogate centre, including researchers, families and patients, to inform his work.
“The thing that really galvanised everything for me was spending time at the centre,” Armitage said. “That was incredibly inspiring, very moving as well, and I think that’s always the place where poetry wants to go to, to the emotional part.” He added that he wanted to avoid “mawkish and sentimental” writing, noting the optimism he witnessed.
Gary Lovelace, a former headteacher living with stage 4 kidney cancer, praised the poem’s positive ending, particularly the line “we keep on Yorkshiring on”. “I found it powerful,” he said. Dr Kathryn Scott, chief executive of Yorkshire Cancer Research, admitted she had “a little tear in my eye” when she first read it.
Armitage, who has been poet laureate since 2019, said poetry remains “in a very healthy place”, especially among younger generations. “They’re fanatically interested in language,” he said, adding that poetry has “proved itself to be unkillable from the very beginning”.
