A New Laureate

Well, so now we know. Carol-Ann Duffy. The first female (and it says here the first openly gay) poet laureate. Fine. Poor woman.

I would have preferred Wendy Cope (who said she didn't want it ages ago), Roger McGough or Tony Harrison. Still, Duffy will do.

The Today programme quoted Mrs Icarus in its entirety:

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

From The world's wife by Carol Ann Duffy

- and then John Humphries went all grumpy about whether she would be allowed to use language like that when writing for royalty.

Allowed?

I started to write - equally grumpily - that he had rather missed the point of poetry (which, particularly for the poets of the last Century or so, was often arguably about challenging the status quo, and provoking a reaction). But then I realised that, intentionally or not, his musing did rather get to the question of what exactly the point of the poet laureate is. A poet in an official, institutionalised state role nowadays seems quite strange - especially when there is some kind of expectation that he or she will write poems explicitly about great events and affairs of state. Andrew Motion notoriously found this difficult, of course.

But looking further back in time, it may not have seemed anything like such an unusual proposition. I can't help but believe that Wyatt, say, Marvell or even Chaucer would have felt somewhat more comfortable in the position - or at least I have this notion that they would have felt less of a lack of integrity. They might not have written exactly the poems we have now, but there is something in their writings that makes me feel that they would have been perhaps more content in the role.

On the other hand, for all three of them it would surely have been a far riskier proposition. They lived in turbulent times, with Kings and leaders who were dangerous and often brutal men. So I suspect it would have been a differently challenging position then - and not one they could easily refuse.

I end up with a vague disquiet nowadays, settled on and around a dislike of the monarchy and a sense of unecessary compromise. At least if Duffy writes something 'they' don't like she is unlikely to be jailed or worse. So that's an improvement.

And we should also note in passing that U. A. Fanthorpe, one of the very few other women who was ever considered for the laureateship (is that a word?) died on Thursday. As with Duffy, her work is much used in the exam syllabus in the UK. I've just been reading 'Not My Best Side' - which is on one of this years' English Lit booklists.