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More poet laureates

Written on: May 2nd, 2009 by: in News, Reviews

There was a fascinating article in today’s New York Times about the announcement of a new British Poet Laureate.

Carol Anne Duffy will be the first woman ever to take the post held in the past by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Dryden, Wordsworth, Sir John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, and most recently, Andrew Motion, who used the position to found an organization pledged to bringing poetry into schools and back into popular culture.

Philip Larkin famously refused the job, and several poets who took the job have grumbled about the requirement that poems need to be written to commemorate trivial events and occasions in the Royal calendar.

The Delaware Library Catalog currently has two collections of Duffy’s poems, Feminine Gospels, and I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists.

The best part of the article for me was the revelation at the end of the article that the remuneration for the Poet Laureate position in about $7,000 a year for the ten year appointment, and “a butt of sack”- a traditional grant to the poet that now amounts to about 600 bottles of sherry.