[New-Poetry] Re: laureate

[Robin Hamilton]

I've been brooding over this, and a couple of things I came up with are ...

        Is a Poet Laureate Hot Dog or Top Dog?

... and ...

    The closest analogy to the position(s) of poet laureate are religious -- Roman Catholic, Anglican Compromise, or Presbyterian.

It's all to do with wreaths, i'ntit?  The palm, the oak, the bays ...  You tramp on a town (delendo est Carthago) and you get an oak wreath, you win the marathon at the Olympics (without the use of steroids) and you're awarded the palm.  Hot dog poets get the laurel wreath ...

        [After the 14thC in Europe ...  late entrants.]

Interesting that the earliest European laureates were -- Petrarch and Skelton -- both self-crowned.

        ... so the poetic crown pickabacks on genocide.  (Oak wreaths before laurel leaves.)

So far so good -- Petrarch and Skelton might both have been egotistical buggers but they did get it right -- no one would quarrel with their self-choice.

But it's when you institutionalise the business that problems start.

Ben Jonson was probably partly self-appointed and partly lion-on-the-egg stamped by Jimmy the Sixth and One.

But once he's there, you *have to have a poet laureate.

Like the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury ...

Since Jonson, the *English laureateship has been the obvious mingled with the hysterically funny.

        But you have to have one, until the previous one dies.

>From that perspective, the appointment of Andrew Motion actually makes a weird kind of sense -- you don't have to choose between Heaney, Wallcott, Harrison, and Fanthorpe-- put in a place marker, and hope when he dies, there'll be an Obvious Candidate.

Mark on the ballot paper, "None of the above."

So the English Laureateship is tending to the Anglican Compromise -- they don't have to die, but may resign.

The Church of Scotland, truly democratic, primus inter pares, elects a new Moderator every (or is it three?) years.

Which is fine, unless you're a member of the Wee Free or the Plymouth Betheren.

All shall take part, and many shall have prizes.

The American System seeems to be closest to the Presbyterian Communion.

Which is fine and Deeply Democratic, but please don't usurp the term "laureate".

R.
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