Britain's Groundbreaking Poet Laureate

When the British newspaper The Guardian asked Carol Ann Duffy how poetry is changing, she emphasized its growing diversity: "There are so many more voices: other cultures, women, performance poets...The edge is now the centre." The new poet laureate is, herself, an embodiment of that diversity. She is Britain's first female laureate and the first to be openly bisexual.

Her appointment is a sign that Britain is more tolerant than it used to be. Duffy lost out on becoming the laureate ten years ago in part because of concerns over her relationship with the poet Jacki Kay -- then Prime Minister Tony Blair reportedly worried how a lesbian poet laureate would play in "middle England."

It's now clear that Blair's apprehension was unfounded, as Duffy, whose verse is timely and accessible, is now extraordinarily popular. A recent survey of British teenagers revealed her to be the country's most widely read poet after Shakespeare. Another poll found that her poem "Prayer," which I've posted below, is Britain's second most popular poem (after Philip Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings").

That isn't to say that Duffy's tenure won't have its share of interesting moments. She made news last September when her poem "Education for Leisure" was banned from school curriculum by a British exam board and became the center of a censorship debate. Here's a taste of it:

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God...

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Duffy fiercely defends the poem's place in school curriculum -- she argues that it can spark valuable discussion about crime and violence. And, in general, she isn't one to back down. Speaking of her role as poet laureate, she straight out told The Guardian, "I don't have ambassadorial talents," and once bluntly said that "no self-respecting poet" would write drivel for the royal birthday parties and the like -- a task which rankled the last laureate, Andrew Motion. Thankfully for her (or maybe for them), the Royal family has already made it clear that she won't be forced to write anything.

When Duffy chooses to write she is a powerful poet. The aforementioned poem "Prayer," a secular yet deeply spiritual sonnet, resonates far beyond its fourteen lines.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer --
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

The "radio's prayer," as played out in the rich concluding line, is pulled from a maritime weather forecast which airs each night around midnight in Britain. It's a fine example of how, in Duffy's hands, something quotidian can illuminate and become gorgeously significant. And it's nice to see that her gift has finally won out over prejudice.

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Comments

[Norge]

No.
People must really conform to win such prices from Authority.
Nothing groundbracking about conformity.

[Mulvaney]

"There should be a way to edit these posts. I had meant to write "Kay Ryan, but made a typo and forgot to finish editing it before I impulsively hit the submit button.

[kareemachan]

That's what I like about Digg - you have a 5-minute grace period to spiff it up.

[Mulvaney]

Perhaps groundbreaking, but our own poet laureate, Kay M (who lives just down the street from me) is both a fine writer, deserving of the honor, a wonderful person, and a lesbian. So I suppose that is a little groundbreaking, too. I have been wondering whether she has been invited to read at the white house -- I have to remember to ask.

[jukesgrrl]

The poems quoted are quite praise-worthy, but they are hardly groundbreaking. Poetry should be defined as edgy or pushing boundaries because of HOW it's written, not because of WHO wrote it. It goes without saying that diverse voices should be appreciated. I have always been appalled that Britain had no female laureates (and no women writers buried in Poet's Corner at Westminster, for that matter). But please let's make sure work isn't being lauded just because it was written by someone who is not a white man. So much of what's called poetry today isn't even poetry. That certainly isn't the case with Carol Ann Duffy, however, and I think she will do "middle England" a world of good.

[marlovian]

The edge is now the centre, yet the centre cannot hold.