Capital Poet
Laureates –
National Poets, City Poets, Capital Poets – Wales Moves Into Gear
At the Miami Beach Sheraton (£280 a night) the eighteen new Guest State Laureates are receiving their certificates. They’ve been here three days already, soaking up the fame. They’ve paid their own air–fares, six course dinner bills and five-star overnights. There are photographers ($50 a shot, ready before you leave), guides and coaches (let us help you improve your poetry – only $40 a time) but the awards are magnificent. A few have opted for the gilt framed version (add $150.75 plus tax). The certificates themselves come free.
The Americans have taken to laureates. Most states have one and a few other places too. Lawrence Sasso is the Smithfield Town Poet, Rhode Island. David Bromige does the job for Sonoma County, California. Ellen Kort, holds office in Wisconsin. In Texas the Governor appoints the annual State Poet as he has done since 1932. This year Cleatus Rattan from Cisco is in post. In New York they are currently running an open competition. Run-DMC rapper Joseph Simmons is a hot tip.
The Miami Beach Sheraton operation is, of course, a scam. Part of poetry’s vanity-driven dark side. But for the most part the American laureates are genuine ambassadorial posts, selected by local arts councils and committees of librarians and readers. At national level the Library of Congress has been appointing a US Poet Laureate (formally a “poetry consultant”) since 1937. Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Rita Dove, Mark Strand and Billy Collins have all served. They receive $35,000 annually, funded by a bequest, to deliver a single lecture and do what they can to raise the status of their art. Joseph Brodsky instigated poetry at airports, supermarkets and hotel rooms. Gwendolyn Brooks worked with schools. Robert Haas built bridges between the storytellers, the poets and the novelists. Billy Collins ran around the country making sparks. The 2004 post holder was Louise Glück. Known for her reticence it was interesting to see how she handled the job. Collins said he thought of her as “being like a masseuse-chiropractor who is able to find pain centers.” America’s 2005 laureate is Ted Kooser, poet of the heartland, from the American Midwest..
In Canada the Parliament appoints a Poet Laureate every two years, pays $22,000, and expects their poet to give readings, advise the Parliamentary Librarian on cultural acquisitions and write new works “at their own pace”. “Creativity cannot be quantified” is the official line. Poets can work in English, or French, or both. George Bowering is the current post holder. Author of more than sixty books he’s unlikely to let his output slip.
In the UK where the job was first invented we’ve been slow to see the ambassadorial advantages of creating further official poetry posts. There’s the five year Professorship of Poetry at Oxford hotly contested in the past by Benjamin Zephaniah and Barry MacSweeney but currently held by Christopher Ricks, a non-verse writing critic. At the University of Glamorgan where the Professorship of Poetry has tenure, Tony Curtis presides. Barnsley Football Club appointed Ian Macmillan as their poet in residence – not quite the same thing but similar. A few towns have had a go, notably Newport, who created their first official Town Poet, Goff Morgan, in 1997. Chosen by open public competition rather in the style of a poetry slam, the ebullient Goff beat Karen Buckley and Judith Jones to the top slot. His initial twelve month appointment as poet ambassador, Newport reporter, present at functions official and otherwise, wittily interpreting and celebrating lasted for thirty-six. What does poetry do? In Goff’s case it speaks.
The post of British Poet Laureate goes back to 1616 when King James the First gave poet Ben Jonson a pension. When Jonson died in 1637 his pension transferred to William Davenant. The post was made an official royal appointment in 1668 when John Dryden got the job. His task was to compose birthday poems for members of the royal family. This was later enlarged to include poems for national occasions. The job was for life with the prime minister nominating a range of successors and the reigning sovereign doing the choosing. Dryden was followed by more than one hundred and fifty years of poets carrying out the same task. Nahum Tate, Colley Cibber, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Masefield, Cecil Day-Lewis, Sir John Betjeman and others. Names famous and some forgotten. All white. Mainland British. No women. Famously the job pays a sack of butt – actually barrels of sherry – commuted in recent times to a much handier £5000.
As the place of poetry in society has shifted so too has that of the Laureate. Ted Hughes – hardly an obvious candidate for authoring celebratory odes for the birthdays of princes – enlarged the role to give it greater reach and a more ambassadorial function. With Hughes in charge poetry could be seen to actually have value in the public realm.
When Hughes died in 1998 he was succeeded by Andrew Motion, the perfect Laureate as it turns out although much criticised at the time of appointment. Competition had been fierce. Many names were banged about: Carol Ann Duffy, Benjamin Zephaniah, Derek Walcott, U A Fanthorpe. A few, like Tony Harrison, said they wouldn’t do it because they did not support the monarchy. Seamus Heaney because he was not British. Tony Blair wanted to create a people’s poet, a New Labour legacy who’d fit in with a prevailing culture of access and diversity. Carol Hughes, Ted’s widow, was uneasy with this apparent attempt at dumbing down. Motion, chummy, charming, marshmallow, as critics have him, was a decent compromise. Duffy was incensed. She categorised his appointment as “a failure of integrity and imagination”. Another man. White again.
“There were about half a dozen names that kept coming round in the washing machine and mine was one of them,” Andrew Motion told me. “But privately I never thought that it would be me. I always thought it would be Carol Ann who I still think would have made a very good job of it. Maybe she will next time.”
Motion, of course, has taken on a significantly changed Laureateship. No longer a life sentence but limited to ten years. No longer just Royal verses but the task of presenting poetry to the larger public. Motion is a focus, an epicentre, an ambassador, a catalyst and a proponent. Many of the new things he does he has created for himself. “I decided that this (the Laureateship) was a job not an honour. I’d need to write about Royal events, yes, but I’d make those part of a larger pattern about national things of one kind or another. I also wanted to work in the educational field, to advise the government on what to do about poems in education, set up a national poetry archive, establish Writing Together which the DfES now use to get writers into schools.” Was this a parallel to the Academi’s Writers on Tour scheme? “Yes – it’s expressly aimed at schools. I feel that children using the language of our time are entitled to some sort of exposure to writers to help them realise that the growth of their imagination is just as important as the growth of their intelligence.” Motion has also fronted nationwide poetry competitions, created the Chant Laureate which gets poetry onto football terraces, established a series of poetry conferences for teachers, and lectured, read and panel-sat, tirelessly, up and down the country. The present Poet Laureate is no shadowy figure writing from a darkened room. He has made himself very visible makes the case for verse whenever and wherever he can.
Wales created the post of Children’s Poet Laureate (Bardd Plant Cymru) five years ago. A Welsh language appointment, Bardd Plant Cymru was established by television channel S4C, working with the Urdd and the Welsh Books Council. Academi joined the partnership in 2003. The BPC is an annual appointment and the recipient is expected to actively promote verse by visiting schools. Current post holder is Mererid Hopwood. Wales also has the tradition of the Prifeirdd, the winners of the crown and the chair annually at the National Eisteddfod. Many see this role as ambassadorial for poetry although there is no actual public duty attached to the award.
The Academi has recently facilitated the appointment of both a Capital Poet for Cardiff and a National Poet for the country as a whole. In the spring of 2005 a group consisting of representatives from the welsh Assembly Government, The Arts Council of Wales, The University of Glamorgan, The Welsh Books Council, The National Eisteddfod, Cymdeithas Barddas and the National library unanimously appointed Gwyneth Lewis as our first National Poet. The post is funded by ACW and administered by Academi. The appointment which has few specific duties other than to represent and promote poetry in Wales will run for two years.
In April 2005 Cardiff Council, on advice from Academi, appointed its first Capital Poet. Gillian Clarke will represent poetry in the capital for its centenary year. She will write official poems,. Work with schoolchildren, take poetry to a variety of communities and take verse to places it would not otherwise reach.
(Peter Finch – adapted from an article which originally appeared in The New Welsh Review)