Being paid £5760 a year and 600 bottles of sherry to write the odd poem, should you be so inclined, sounds like a rather pleasant job. And Carol Ann Duffy has just landed it.Britain's quaint old post of Poet Laureate has been around for some 340 years. What exactly the point of it is, apart from penning a few verses for the Monarch, I'm not sure.
Apparently the holder doesn't actually have to produce anything if the muse doesn't take them. If they spend the entire ten years claiming poet's block, that's just ticketyboo.
However in practice a few memorable lines are expected on Royal occasions such as weddings or birthdays. Glamorous occasions only of course. "Lines on the Queen falling off her horse and landing in a pile of horse manure" wouldn't quite fit the bill.
But no Poet Laureate has ever been sacked except the first, John Dryden, who was given the boot after he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to William the Third. Nobody has ever been fired for producing sub-standard work, even when it causes public uproar.
The process of selecting the Poet Laureate is deeply mysterious and never divulged. "Not only is the process secret, but even the reason why it is a secret is a secret" concluded one thwarted investigator. Some sort of Masonic ritual, perhaps?
Well, all I can say is, I may be out of a job but that's not one I'll be applying for. Apart from there being quite enough awful poetry in circulation already, somehow I think being a Republican would upset the apple cart.
NB: I mean Republican in the British sense (anti-Monarchy) rather than the Irish sense (a united Ireland) or the American sense (right-wing). A confusing word these days....
Photo: Carol Ann Duffy
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