[Jerome Betts]

Interesting Guardian article, but only one stanza given. I didn't know about the interest in wildfowl. Good for her, and Alfred Austin.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/de...christmas-poem

[Kate Benedict]

You can read the whole of it here:

http://www.radiotimes.com/content/fe...-of-christmas/

Heavy-handed in the extreme, imho.

[Shaun J. Russell]

It's bloody horrible, if you ask me.

[Michael Cantor]

Heavy-handed is hardly adequate. Hammer-handed? Self-defeating in its earnest and self-righteous simplicity? There's little here I disagree with in the broad sense, but I find this tunnel vision approach to complex situations disturbing, whether it's coming from the right or left.

[David Landrum]

Politics and Poetry--never the twain should meet.

dwl

[Philip Quinlan]

I've never been a great fan of the lady, and this kind of confirms my view.

But I suppose one has to allow for the Xmas factor - the suspension of normal good taste.

As for politics and poetry mixing - I think it isn't so much impossible as very difficult. Tom Paulin achieves it quite well in this poem:

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya....do?poemId=413

[Donna English]

It appears that when it comes to the subject of Christmas, she's not gifted.

[John Whitworth]

I think part of the problem is the Laureate can go on and on. Obviously no magazine would print this - it's just too flaming long. The other part of the problem is she wants to show that her politics are right on, so she has to touch all the bases (is that a figure from baseball? Must stop using it).

Perhaps I don't want to be Laureate after all.

[John Whitworth]

When I was at school the English master suggested we each of us write a poem for Christmas. Mercifully, I cannot remember my own. The winner by general acclamation, went like this.

Christmas comes but once a year
And when it does we have some beer.

THAT's the way to do it.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Heavy-handed is hardly adequate. Hammer-handed? Self-defeating in its earnest and self-righteous simplicity?

Unoriginal, uncreative, derivative, humorless, whiny, lacks style and voice, is pompous, pretentious, poorly packaged, prattles incessantly and is Just Plain Dumb.

In my charitable opinion.