As the tenth anniversary of Sophie Lancaster’s death approaches, Pomona has brought back into print Simon Armitage’s Black Roses, which went on to become an award-winning radio and stage play.
The book is a poetic sequence written in the voice of Sophie, the 20-year-old who was attacked in a Lancashire park in 2007 and died 13 days later. The ferocity of the assault caused distress and outrage when reported and led to the creation of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, a charity opposed to all forms of hate crime and victimisation.
A third of the book’s profits will go to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.
The radio broadcast of Black Roses won the BBC Radio Best Speech Programme of 2011 and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for Poetry. A subsequent stage production at the Royal Exchange won a Manchester Theatre Award.