Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlotte Innes
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It's not a good poem, which is a pity. Poor Carol Ann seems to be struggling under the weight of the laureateship, like Andrew Motion before her. She obviously feels the duty to come up with something on the riots, and can only manage a bit of mournful head-shaking, like a liberal headmaster telling the school assembly how sad he is about the behaviour of the year ten boys.
In the eighties, she was much better. Responding to the disaffected youth of the time, she wrote dramatic monologues for a compulsive thief ('The most unusual thing I ever stole? A snowman.') and a young man bent on destruction ('Today I am going to kill something. Anything.') The latter is such a good poem that a group of ladies were so disturbed by it that they persuaded an exam board to remove it from the GCSE syllabus.
But maybe CAD manage to get into non-laureate mode and come up with something better than this.