The Poet Laureate

Andrew Motion’s shift as Poet Laureate is due to end shortly, after the agreed term of ten years, and the appointment of the next one is thus just as essential a topic for speculation as who will win the Boat Race (it was Oxford, last Saturday- just in case you missed it). Some might say that the Boat Race has as much to do with World Class Rowing as the Laureate job is to do with the best poetry and others could add that rowing holds the attention of a busy, busy British public about as often as poetry does, which is for no more than a shimmer above nothing on a seismic graph.

So, who cares? Well, I do. Mainly because it makes for a fascinating discussion, since there are no criteria to say who should be chosen, and because you can bet on it. I picked Andrew Motion at 4/1 ten years ago but was too embarrassed to go into a Portsmouth betting shop and try to explain what I wanted to bet on.

The last time I looked, William Hill Bookmakers had Duffy and Armitage locked at 5/4 joint favourites with good old Roger at 6/1. One can see Roger McGough stepping in as kindly old duffer in the Betjeman mode but my view was that Duffy would get the vote as the politically correct choice (female, lesbian, originally Scottish, etc) as long as she’d be prepared to accept it. Notwithstanding that she’s probably the best poet with a popular appeal anyway. Popular appeal as far as poetry goes these days is always likely to mean someone whose poems are set to be read in school. Armitage, likeable and equally on the syllabus, will probably do it if Duffy does turn it down, but I will ask him at Swindon next month if you really want to know.

The problem with the job is that it is so undefined. It isn’t necessarily given to the best poet in the country. Wordsworth, Tennyson and Hughes have done it but so has Colley Cibber. Motion reports that both the Queen and Tony Blair told him that ‘you don’t have to do anything’. He also reports that the job gave him a ‘writer’s block’ but he deserves some sympathy and I’ve always had a certain respect for the seriousness and commitment that he gave to the appointment. Following on from the telegenic, hugely popular and jovial John Betjeman and then the brooding machismo of Ted Hughes, the considered water-colour lyricism of Motion’s poems were always going to look pale in comparison. But somebody had to do the job and one reason for retaining the post of Poet Laureate was that the free-wheeling, radical reformism of the New Labour government under Tony Blair wanted to reform so much so quickly that a few old anachronisms needed to stay. Even if the only point in having a Poet Laureate was to be able to give a few bottles of port to a writer ‘on the house’ and have a quiz question that most people in the pub won’t know.
Motion was by no means as bad a poet as his detractors make out. His poems may not have been as memorable as Betjeman’s hymn to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn or Ted’s animal poems but in Anne Frank Huis and Salt Water, the extended account of the River Thames in memory of his friend who drowned on the Marchioness, he provided two excellent pieces worthy of places in any anthology.

Motion will, I think, be the first ever living ex-laureate because I believe everybody else did it for life. The pressure to appoint a woman seems overwhelming in an age when a better male candidate might be overlooked just to make sure the point was made but if Carol Ann Duffy is offered the job it will be because she is the best qualified poet for it. But if she doesn’t want it, they’ve got a choice between two user-friendly blokes. I’m sure Roger would love to do it but I’m not convinced he’ll be given the chance.