Editorial
As I write, the new Poet Laureate has not been named. And soundings among poets suggest that most of them see no need to have a laureate at all. The post has been held by a number of bad writers; it has caused even good writers to produce rubbish. Is there any reason why we should take it seriously?
Yet someone is going to get the job, and it will not be a scribbler; about the time you read this, you should know who he or she is. That person will have the chance to give contemporary poetry a high profile. There is no rule saying they have to write loyal odes to the Royal Family or patriotic hymns the next time Blair bombs Iraq. What they are expected to do is write public poetry (but only when they feel they can produce something worthy), and this will then appear in newspapers and be read by people who normally never pick up a poetry book. One also hopes that they wouldn’t only be interested in pushing their own work but would try to get other people’s verses into the schools, on the buses, and over the air.
Most poetry is private, of course. But I receive quite a lot of political poetry, much of it concerned with Northern Ireland as in the work of Jim Greenhalf and Mike Jenkins. In such cases I have to consider whether printing it will help, or anyway not harm the peace process; writing is part of the way we interpret our society to ourselves and, therefore, public.
So the Laureateship should go, not to the best living poet, not even to the best poet who is prepared to take it, but to the person most able to raise the status of poetry in the English-speaking world. If it happens to be a woman, for the first time ever, that would be particularly good news.
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