Simon Armitage 
Out of the Blue 

This book brings together three verse form pieces each of which was created to be part of a broader form. ‘Out of the Blue’ itself is a powerful, award-winning, poem-film created five years after the attacks which destroyed the twin towers in New York. With a title from a speech of Churchill, ‘We May Allow Ourselves a Brief Period of Rejoicing’ was a Channel 5 commission for a broadcast celebrating the 60th anniversary of VE Day. The third, ‘Cambodia’, comes from the radio drama The Violence of Silence set 30 years after the Khmer Rouge