The Not Dead

Limited paperback original. 8vo. Pp. xiii-[xiv], [47], [3]. Grey wraps, printed in red and black. With Author's five-page introduction. No. 341 of 500 specially printed copies. The Special Edition, published under a different ISBN to the trade issue.

Signed by Author to title page. Publisher's bookmark advertising publication, laid in.

A 2008 Mental Health in the Media Documentary Film Winner. A short collection of poetry, originally broadcast on Remembrance Sunday 2007 as a Channel 4 documentary, directed by Brian Hill. The poems focus on the testimonies of veterans of the Gulf, Bosnia and Malayan wars. "Never having been to the front line, turning the words, phrases and experiences of these soldiers into verse has been the closest I've ever come to writing 'real' war poetry, and as close as I ever want to get".

Appointed Poet Laureate in 2019, Armitage is currently professor of poetry at the University of Leeds, a post he took up after completing his four-year elected stint (2015–19) to the chair of Oxford Professor of Poetry. "[U]niquely impressive. In transmuting the stories of particular soldiers into the lyrical music of Simon Armitage's poems, something exceptional is achieved: the painful truth of lives damaged beyond help is made meaningful for the rest of us. We can only catch our breath and read them again and again." –Joan Bakewell