Three Cheers For Carol Ann

I have never really seen the point of having a Poet Laureate, mainly because I don't like most poetry, which, like bad Gewurztraminer, tends to be over-floral and leaves me with a headache. The poetry Andrew Motion wrote while Laureate was awful, and I can't believe that it's the best of his work; in fact, I am sure it must be the worst, and it is only because I am put off by reading the poetry Andrew Motion wrote as Laureate that I can't bring myself to go and read more Andrew Motion to check.

A Poet Laureate, anyway, is a national poet who is supposed to write poems about national things. A sort of poet-in-residence for the whole of Britain. The very idea of it makes me cringe. Every time a member of the Royal Family has a baby, this person will be wheeled out to compose the official haiku which encapsulates what how we all feel about it. Something like:

Don't care don't care don't
care don't care don't care don't care
don't care just don't care.

A few months back, Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate, which I found an intriguing choice. I met her a few years ago and saw her perform; I remember her being lovely and down-to-earth, and I was so struck by her poem Valentine as to have never forgotten about it -

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Even so I wasn't convinced she would be able to withstand the horrors of having to compose the Official Someone Royal Has Reproduced poem every however often.

Today her first poem as Laureate was published. Of course, it was the Queen's official birthday this weekend, so no doubt she had taken the chance to pen a sickly ditty devoted to Her Maj. Right?

Perhaps not. Perhaps, like the rest of us, she has other things on her mind. Perhaps, for once, we actually have a Laureate worthy of the position, who is actually capable of speaking for the nation - or at least for me - in verse. Hurrah for Ms Duffy for making me believe in poetry again.

'Politics'

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.