Wednesday 17 March 2010

Duffy Earns Her Butt

When Carol Ann Duffy was named Poet Laureate, it seemed an odd appointment, not least because she is a pretty good (sometimes very good indeed) poet, and not exactly a comfortable establishment figure. I was expecting a sullen silence, punctuated occasionally by an outburst of barbed and disobliging verse - but no, she has proved amazingly prolific and responsive. Her latest is this prompt response to the latest crisis in the nation's life. Setting a current national hero in the Homeric tradition - this (if faintly absurd) seems to me just the kind of thing a Poet Laureate ought to be doing. Truly she is earning her butt of Malmsey (if that's the going rate for the job).

6 comments:

  1. Good old Carol Ann - yes faintly absurd indeed, but then she has the ability to find life faintly absurd from time to time, and I think that makes her an ideal Poet Laureate (do a good job, but don't take our funny human ways too seriously!) She's a true professional, and retains her integrity - it would seem - so far.

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  2. Hmm, it will take a lot for me to forgive her this shocker but writing about Beckham is a leap forward.

    If during her laureateship she can come up with one memorable line or phrase she'll have done pretty well.

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  3. I'm with Brit on this one. However, this poem is far from her worst and I find myself not disliking it.

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  4. Someone, it might have been Leigh Hunt, made the very just observation that poet laureate is the one office on earth that can never be filled appropriately: appoint a really good poet and he or she is demeaned by the post; appoint some doggerelizing booby and he or she disgraces it.

    By the way, I only learned the other week that a "butt" of sack is around 110 gallons of the stuff.

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  5. Jonathan - Betjeman was perfect for it, being interested in the stuff of the nation, not too good and just doggerelising enough.

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  6. I'm glad I read and liked The World's Wife before reading the poem Brit has linked. Ugh.

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