Output details

Black Roses

Twenty-year-old Sophie Lancaster and her boyfriend suffered a vicious attack from a group of youths in a Lancashire park in August 2007: they were assaulted because they looked and dressed differently. Sophie died several days later as a result of her injuries. The poetic sequence Black Roses was developed through research into the circumstances of the fatal assault and conversations with Sophie’s mother about Sophie’s life. It was important to develop a way of writing about Sophie’s life and murder without sentimentalising her. The first-person was chosen as a means of dramatising her reactions to the world and articulating her own perspective on her ‘difference’ as well as a means of giving voice to her experience both during the attack and its aftermath, when she was in a coma. As such, the work sets out to find a way of celebrating her attitudes and character as well as commemorating her, exploring the power of poetry to confront and express difficult issues.