[peter richards]

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Mrs Scrooge

[Terese Coe]

Seven poets give verse advice to the new Laureate...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8025269.stm

[David Anthony]

I think she probably got the job because she's the best poet writing in Britain today.
If you don't believe me, take a look at 'Prayer' above, or google 'Warming Her Pearls'. Also look at Peter's links.

[peter richards]

Well said, David. Although I lack the synopsis to substantiate it, I suspect that she is head and shoulders above the rest, both in terms of craft and my favourite new criterion, i.e. poems that say something.

So let me take this unique opportunity too say that she is worthy of being singled out as Britain's formost exponent of the poetic arts and never mind, as it were, the bollocks.

[Rory Waterman]

Although I lack the synopsis to substantiate it, I suspect that she is head and shoulders above the rest

So, Peter, what you're saying is that you can't put her in context but she's still the greatest living British poet. I would disagree, but she's probably the best person for the job. She ticks a number of boxes:

1.She's certainly good, and a 'real' poet.
2.She's read by children, whether they like it or not.
3.She's genuinely famous and promotes herself: a more public poet than most.
4.She's not a white more-or-less heterosexual man, again.

So, I agree when you say that

she is worthy of being singled out as Britain's formost exponent of the poetic arts and never mind, as it were, the bollocks.

but what part did (4), or as you say the 'bollocks', have to do with it? Why else did the powers that be change the appointment from life to ten years if not to 'raise the profile of poetry' or something like that? Surely one way to change the public profile of poetry is to tick as many demographic boxes as possible over a short period of time. As far as I care, I'm glad she is the new Poet Laureate, but I wonder if it would be possible now to pick a heterosexual, white, middle-class English male that ticks no other boxes. This isn't a chauvinistic rant, God forbid.

I remember a poem about, I think, a flasher with a 'blue root' in a hand. It left an impression, years ago. What is it? Does anyone know? I'd love to see that one again.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Duffy's elegy for U.A. Fanthorpe:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...arol-ann-duffy

There's also an article by her:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...-poet-laureate

Duncan

[Clive]

Rory - the decision to change the PL's terms and conditions was made for the appointment of Motion, not to pave the way for Duffy.

David and Peter - I second and third your respective emotions.

Duncan - lovely poem from Duffy.

[peter richards]

Rory, I make-a de little joke, you see.

'Never mind the bollocks' is a common vernacular phrase that can hardly have passed you by. It's also part of the title of an album by the Sex Pistols. It effectively 'means', or references, ignoring the irrelevant and/or idle chit-chat (or pallid imitations, in the case of the Sex Pistols). Your category 4 falls neatly or messily into all that. The sexual connotation, while absent from the common usage of the phrase, makes for a pun in this case of an appointment from the distaff ranks, see?

So much more fun when jokes are explained, innit.

[Maryann Corbett]

Today's New York Times has an article:

After 341 years....

[Mary Meriam]

Lesbian Poet Laureates of the World Unite!