Tuesday, February 03, 2009

News at Eleven: Newspapers cover the selection of a new laureate

as if the post were the Wimbledon Championship of poetry--a Best Poet prize that all of us must surely want to win. This is absurd. For one thing, there are and always have been good poets who want nothing to do with it. Thomas Gray, Sir Walter Scott, William Morris and Rudyard Kipling turned it down. Kipling said that a poet has no business being a paid employee of the state--and I have some sympathy with that view.

from The Guardian: Abolish the post of poet laureate
also The Independent: Philip Hensher: Sorry Wendy, but we need to keep the Poet Laureate
also The Guardian: Poet laureate

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