Thanks, Doug, the article was concise, info-packed, and helpful.
I especially enjoyed two parts, one about Tony Blair's adviser on cultural
matters trying to find out who advises the PM [PMs who for at least 200
years had been choosing the poets laureate], and who concluded that the
process was secret and "even the reason why it is a secret is a secret".
[Ya gotta love Brit wit!]
Here's a nother section of the article that may interest petc folk:
"Who should have been Poet Laureate but wasn't?
There are a very large number of poets whose work is still read and enjoyed,
but who were never considered by the government of their day to be suitable
for the post. And, conversely, there are painfully few laureates who have
left behind any memorable poetry. Some of the great English poets were
deliberately passed over because they were politically unreliable, like John
Milton or Alexander Pope, or their private lives were scandalous, like Lord
Byron, or they were women. The Victorians did offer the post to William
Morris, who was a socialist, and the Thatcher government offered it to
Philip Larkin, but both turned it down. When Henry Pye died in 1813, the
government could, if they had wanted to, have chosen William Blake, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth or Byron, but preferred to offer the
laureateship to the romantic novelist, Sir Walter Scott. When he turned it
down, the title went to Robert Southey, who was a vast improvement on most
of his predecessors, and yet is forgotten now, except that we still remember
a brilliant parody of a Southey poem, "You Are Old Father William", by Lewis
Carroll. Wordsworth had to wait another 30 years until Southey died. At 73,
he was the oldest person ever appointed Poet Laureate. When he died, Queen
Victoria wanted her next Poet Laureate to be someone named Samuel Russell,
but he said no."
---------------------------------
Best,
Judy
2009/5/1 Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> or?
>
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-big-question-whats-the-history-of-poet-laureates-and-does-the-job-still-mean-anything-1677076.html
>
> Doug
> Douglas Barbour
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> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
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> Latest books:
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> Wednesdays'
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> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> There's the wind and the rain
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> Who say they have no claim to know what's right
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