BBC plans to send poet to Afghanistan battlefields

When Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon told of life in first world war trenches, technology did not allow soldiers to kill at long range at the press of a button and dispatches from the French battlefields took days to reach home.

As the nature of warfare has changed, so have communications, but a BBC team is hoping to revive the British tradition of war poetry by taking one of the country's leading poets to Afghanistan.

The programme-makers plan to film Simon Armitage's response to frontline operations around Helmand province. While a handful of visual artists have worked in the theatre of war since fighting began in October 2001, Armitage will be the first poet to be granted access.



The Yorkshire writer, who was heavily tipped for the post of poet laureate that went to Carol Ann Duffy this month, already has an impressive track record of work reflecting the impact of war. So far Armitage's writing has concentrated on the trauma of combatants who have returned to pick up the threads of their lives in Britain. The award-winning poet believes that the current wars, although conducted far away, have altered the nature of British life.

"It could be argued that the permanent backdrop of our current military situation makes almost every poem a war poem," he said.

This weekend Armitage said that the film project was still in its infancy and in the hands of the BBC and the Ministry of Defence. The planned one-hour documentary, Behind the Lines, is to be produced by BBC veteran Roger Courtier, who hopes to send Armitage to Helmand for a month. Courtier believes the tradition of the British war poet deserves to be reinstated: "We think it is a fabulous idea, but are at the early stages. It will be some time before it comes to fruition."