The Difficult Life of Britain's Poet Laureate

Posted on April 7, 2005

The New York Times addresses the difficult life of Britain's Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. One of the Poet Laureate's most difficult jobs is to pen a poem to celebrate major royal occasions, such as Prince Charles' upcoming nuptials to longtime mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles. But the road to this royal wedding has been paved with many potholes: the Queen's refusing to pay for Charles' dream of an extravagant seated organic food feast at the palace, the Queen's refusal to attend the civil service at a public registry office, the moving of the date from Friday to Saturday because of the Pope's funeral, and the public's outrage at finding out that legally Camilla will be Queen the minute Charles becomes King, regardless of what title she uses - contrary to Charles' assurances that the most-reviled woman in Britain will not be Queen. So, what will the Royal Wedding Poem be like? Above all, it must be tasteful.

Appraising Mr. Motion in The Daily Telegraph, the poet Craig Raine allowed that he had written some "perfectly creditable" laureate poems. But then Mr. Raine branded a Motion poem not only derivative of a work by Wilfred Owen, but also reflecting an "inadvertent, unconscious lift" from one of his, Mr. Raine's, own poems.

Mr. Raine said, though, that he sympathized with the laureate's enforced inoffensiveness. "Good taste is the enemy of literature," he wrote, imagining what might happen if Mr. Motion could let reality, rather than discretion, be his guiding force.

Referring to two of the many royal scandals that seem to cry out for comment by an anti-laureate, Mr. Raine wrote: "It isn't that I'd like laureate poems entitled, "On the Occasion of James Hewitt Visiting Princess Diana for the Purpose of Consolation," or "Imagine Being a Tampax: Intimate Thoughts on the Mobile Phone."