‘Keep slaying the dragon inside’: Simon Armitage pens poem for World Cancer Day

Poet laureate tackles daunting' commission from Yorkshire Cancer Research to mark charity's centenary year

Cancer is a subject the poet laureate Simon Armitage has always shied away from. I find it very daunting," he said. I've lost friends and family to cancer."

But when he was commissioned to write a poem to mark World Cancer Day, he was forced to confront the realities of the disease. I think I saw part of my task as being slightly demystifying and maybe de-mythologising or de-demonising cancer a little bit to myself," Armitage said.