Contemporary Poetry

chapter 2

Politics and Poetics

I

n May 2009 Carol Ann Duffy became the fi rst woman poet
laureate in UK history. In recent decades the role of laureate
became subject to increasing pressures of ‘marking’ royal events.
Such were the demands placed upon Andrew Motion, Duffy’s
predecessor, that after some resistance, he began to write ‘occa-
sional’ public verse. Provocatively, Duffy has eschewed the more
ceremonial function of laureate and is intent upon raising aware-
ness of poetry in the public sphere. The new laureate’s fi rst work
was a pointed and topical criticism of the abuse of allowances by a
number of British MPs. Responding to the published poem, Mark
Brown comments:

She could have chosen to write on Prince Philip’s 88 th birth-

day, or the sombre commemorations of the D-day landings in

Normandy. Instead Carol Ann Duffy has chosen a far more

meaty subject for her fi rst poem as poet laureate: politics.

And she’s angry – more Duffy Furiosa in the words of one

expert... It is a powerful, passionate commentary on the

corrosiveness of politics on politicians and the ruinous effect

of idealism.^1

Through an insistent echoing of former Prime Minister Tony
Blair’s rallying cry ‘Education, Education, Education’, Duffy’s
poem articulates an absolute disaffection with the failure of politi-