Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

"A Poet Laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poet_Laureate


# 1984: Ted Hughes, OM, on the refusal of Philip Larkin
# 1999: Andrew Motion (for a ten year period)
# 2009: Carol Ann Duffy (first female appointed)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ann_Duffy

"Previously .....Prime Minister Tony Blair was 'worried about having a homosexual poet laureate because of how it might play in middle England'. "

CAROL ANN DUFFY (1955–present)
In Mrs Tilscher's Class

You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.
That for an hour, then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she'd left a gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone's nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce,
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your parents, appalled, when you got back home.

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled,
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown,
as the sky split open into a thunderstorm.

This is a poem that I studied as part of my English Higher in Scotland.

Some of the expressions; 'skittle of milk', are not at all common.


‘A skittle of milk’ suggests both the shape of the old-fashioned milk-bottle (setting the poem definitely in the past) and the idea that everything is seen as game

Revision Notes

www.st-ninians.e-dunbarton.sch.uk/_files/English/mrs_tilchers_class_notes.doc


I can remember boys playing skittles (ten pin bowling) with the milk bottles that were distributed to school children for free, before the days of Margaret Thatcher.


"Brady and Hindley" These names are infamous. "The poet mentions Brady and Hindley, the Moors murderers."

Brady and Hindley tortured and murdered young children from the Manchester area.

It's just been announced that Carol Ann Duffy has been appointed the new Poet Laureate in place of Andrew Motion.

Duffy is an ardently outspoken feminist as well as being an avowed and militant Lesbian, is frequently misandrist* and cuttingly male bashing in her comments and remarks, and conducts an extremely unconventional lifestyle.

She once gave a reading of her poems as well as spouting forth a whole tirade of highly contentious stuff in a church during a poetry festival down in Herefordshire, England, when several men in the audience stood up and yelled abuse at her and walked out of the church, leaving her looking gobsmacked for some reason.

No doubt Duffy will now appear on every BBC program going, and on ITV1's "Loose Women" slot and be hailed as some kind of new Literary Messiah in the world of English Language poetry not to mention the unbridled Feminist cause which appears to be her raison d'etre most of the time. She should team up with Harriet "Batty Hatty" Harman - what a lovely combination that would be......not.

*Misandry - a word many people choose to ignore.....it means the hatred and dismissal of the male gender. A misandrist is an individual who practises it.

The female equivalent is much more well known - misogyny/misogynist.

ahaha It don't even bloomin rhyme ahaha.

Dear Jim'll, please make me Laureate I'm a woman and a poet with nothing much to offer as it appens. Please, please, please yours sincerely Carol Ann Duffy.

PS or make me a government minister as a second choice.

It says much that the above poem was writen in the American style first concieved by Walt Whitman. The style has since come to replace traditional European Formalism as the predominant mode in numerous languages. Be this as it may, the US government is in some respects behind the Brits. It would be highlx unlikely for the Library of Congress to select a poet that uses so much leaping juxtaposition, that relies so much on texture and affect. For some reason the US gov. Likes a clean logical movement in its poetry. On the other hand, the first US female US Laureate was some time ago. Rita Dove held the position for a time. She is not a lesbian to my knowledge, though she is Black. Also, in the US, the post is only held for a year, but the poet can serve several times. Also, those lesbian feminists that Damien described are perhaps not exactly as they seem. My past work in GLBT and womens issues made me realize that such women, though outwardly misandrous, are very mysoginistic. Spell hell. Dont care.

Also, Damian (the most fun one to harang), I am shocked to find you so ignorant on Feminism. You still seem to think of it as if it were one idea and not many. I am starteled that you do not know more. How did you get an English degree sans theory? If you had theory, you would have been introduced to the French Feminist philosopher, Helene Cixous whose essay "The Laugh of the Medusa" would surely have opened your mind on the suaject. As it is, I suggest it to you for reading as well as some Queer theoretical readings: The Trouble with Gender, Judith Butler and Proust and the Spectacle of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick. Also, there are some very good pieces on the Bard should you wish more reading on issues of Gender Sex, and Sexuality. I guess I should not be surprised that you have not engaged these things in your studies. The Brits have sliped a bit in philosophy. Now it has been largely left to French, Germans, and Americans. Though I think there is still an influential Marxist in England.

I find that feminists have lost their way in the last 15 years.
Feminism used to be about equality, now its just about busting balls.
Men are 'gendered' just as white people are 'raced'.
Most people act like discrimination against these groups should not be classed as discrimination.

Edward Teach, I wonder where you are at and what your experiences have been. I recently reread an article by June Jordan, an American scholar and activist in Feminist and African American issues. The piece was about Black English. It was published in the earjy 80`s. After reading it, I was very upset at her rather bigoted description of White English and how she unwitingly implied that it was uniform and static. The reason why I was apaled by it the second time around and not the first is because the more recent race scholarship that I am used to takes a more deconstructionalist and less universal stand. Indeed, more recent studies have been more engaged in examining issues from each position. Perhaps it is that society is not always on top of these things and is behind a bit.

Poems such as "Mrs Tilsher" will require a great deal of annotation in 50 years' time, e.g.

skittle of milk
the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
a long pole.
a bell swung by a running child.
Brady and Hindley
a gold star by your name.
the scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone's nonsense
the inky tadpoles
the lunch queue
Reports were handed out

MrP