Alison

I'm very interested in your thoughts around the physical presence of the poet
- in performance and in the community - alongside your reference to faux
laureates.

The community I was living in till recently had little recourse to poetry for
its occasions and debates untl some imaginative - or specifically
unimaginative perhaps - literature officer decided to create awareness by
making a laureateship for the area with a small stipend. The person appointed
has  worked (fulltime!) like Vulcan in the mountain making metal of words and
has not, that I can see, celebrated the King's phallus directly. I am trying
to be aware in a postmodern way of the inevitable  intertwining of her
commissioned work with the political parameters of the community - but she
seems to engage fairly nakedly with many levels of community in her poems
both in their form and content - without, I suppose, ever being directly
adversarial either. Like a Fool in the Court, perhaps?

By the way, she backs off in all sorts of situations so that emerging poets
can do their work - I don't see her as self-aggrandising though it's a role
which could be abused in that way.

Your point about physical presence - I think having a designated poet living
in the community whose work it is to promote, mostly by doing, this
particular art, shows evidence of being beneficial - is there an anarchistic
thrust in giving up a 'straight' social work job for this one?

Claire