Scribbling women

The royal family has indicated that Duffy will not be expected to crank out poems for Edward and Sophie,as she had once feared. Though some of Englands most hallowed names have been its poet-laureates,the position presents an existential dilemma for many poets. After all,a true poet is supposed to pit herself against the nations tinny narratives,not compose little verses for state occasions. Southey and Wordsworth earned Byrons eternal contempt for their bureaucratic pretensions You have your salary; wast for that you wrought?/And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise,and their shrunken horizons There is a narrowness in such a notion/ Which makes me wish youd change your lakes for ocean. If someone has comfortably filled out the role,it was John Betjeman with his serene,untroubled hold over middle England. One can only hope that Duffy manages to escape the fate of her predecessors,whose public pomp paralysed their poetry.