Duffy UK�s first female poet laureate

Queen Elizabeth has appointed Carol Ann Duffy as Britain�s new poet laureate � the first woman, and the first Scot, to hold the post since its creation 341 years ago.
   Duffy (53) was regarded as runner-up to Andrew Motion 10 years ago but ruled out, according to some accounts, because Tony Blair feared her sexuality might not play well with �Middle England� However, according to The Sunday Telegraph, she said she had thought �long and hard� about accepting her appointment before embracing it �as a recognition of the great woman poets we have writing now�.
   The post of Britain�s poet laureate, according to The Sunday Telegraph, has been filled for 350 years by people who wished they had stuck to writing. The job pays poorly, comes with an obligation to commemorate important state occasions, and consistently produces work fit only for the jeers of posterity.
   Ted Hughes, suspected - on the basis of such ill-fashioned lines as �A helicopter snatched you up/ The pilot, it was me� (composed to celebrate the nuptials of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson) - that he had become a laughing stock. The outgoing laureate, Andrew Motion, whose efforts have touched on everything from the Queen�s wedding anniversary to the Trades Union Congress, complained the job was �incredibly difficult and entirely thankless� and had given him nothing but writer�s block.
   All of which has brought heated calls for the post either to be abolished or radically reformed. But the Lord Chamberlain, advised behind the scenes by Downing Street, came up with a new solution. Give the job to a woman.
   A 55-year-old Glaswegian, she has thus become the first female laureate, disturbing the peace of what a succession of commentators described as �the male-dominated world of poetry�. The record suggests that is a dodgy contention, and that female poets have held their own. But it doesn�t explain why none of them has made it as a laureate.
   Germaine Greer, writing in anticipation of announcement, argued that: �Most women would have the sense to refuse the chore.� Too right. The pay works out at Sterling pounds 5760 a year, plus 650 free bottles of oloroso sherry.
   Ostensibly, the duties are not onerous, but laureates are expected to produce lines upon notable royal events, such as weddings or funerals, for which they are traditionally pilloried.
   According to The Sunday Telegraph, 19 previous laureates have, to be fair, included several of Britain�s greatest poets, notably Wordsworth, Tennyson and John Masefield. Sadly, few have managed to shine in the job, and several proved to be enduring embarrassments. Nahum Tate, who held the position for 23 years from 1692, is best known for penning the words of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night, but also wrote a �revised� version of King Lear with a happy ending.
   Duffy can only be an improvement. Yet the appointment is complicated by her own long-held and ill-disguised reservations about the job. It is no secret that she was a prime contender for the post 10 years ago, when Motion was appointed, but lost out on what might be described as lifestyle concerns. Tony Blair thought a working-class lesbian with militantly leftist credentials might unsettle Middle England.
   All hell broke loose in literary circles. For her own part, Duffy let it be known that she didn�t want the job anyway. �I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie (the Earl and Countess of Wessex),� she fumed. �No self-respecting poet should have to.�
   What has changed? Says The Sunday Telegraph, Well, for a start, Britain has. Culture Secretary Andy Burnham was apparently impressed by lobbyists who told him that a gay woman laureate was just what the country needed. Duffy herself would appear to agree. �I think we�ve all grown up a lot over the past 10 years,� she said. �It�s fantastic that I am an openly gay writer.�
   And does an openly gay writer, fiercely protective of her artistic integrity, say how she would react to a royal wedding now? She hopes to be �inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership�.
   Overlooked in all this is the quality of her poetry. On the circuit, Duffy has been a substantial presence for decades, but it was the scuppering of her laureateship chances last time that made her a star.
   The Oxbridge brigade - many of whom had dismissed her in the early days - was forced to take a fresh look, and duly praised her wry, witty treatments of romance, loss, sentiment, innocence and wonder. While steeped in the sometimes harsh imagery of working-class experience, her poems were of timeless themes.
   As her reputation grew, her readings grew to resemble rock concerts. Her books became wildly popular in schools.
   Yet she remained an outsider. Born in the slums of Glasgow in 1955, the eldest of five children, she grew up in a family of old-school Catholic socialists. At convent school she discovered a taste for poetry and, at 14, decided it was what she was going to do. �Yes,� asked her parents, �but what�s your job going to be?�
   At a local poetry evening, she met Adrian Henri, one of the then-fashionable �Mersey Sound� poets, and lived with him for several years. �He gave me confidence,� she said later. �He was great. It was all poetry and sex, very heady, and he was never faithful. He thought poets had a duty to be unfaithful. I�ve never got the hang of that.�
   Her own rise to stardom began in the early 1980s, when she won the Poetry Society�s national award. Then came her breakthrough collection, Standing Female Nude, hailed by the poet and critic Robert Nye as �the debut of a genuine and original poet�.
   She volunteers few insights into what appears to be a strikingly complicated private life. She has a daughter, Ella, with writer Peter Benson, but she and Benson have never lived together, and for several years Duffy shared her life with novelist Jackie Kay. They have since split up. She portrays her home life in a Lancashire suburb as a daily round of watching Coronation Street, �reading poetry on the loo� and playing poker.
   Now she has the top job. One that has been a poisoned chalice throughout history, that wasn�t supposed to come her way and one that, deep down, she may not truly want. Will being the first woman to hold the post save her from the Dread Poets Society?
   Duffy told the BBC�s Woman�s Hour that she hoped to contribute to people�s understanding of what poetry could do and where it could be found. �Poetry is all around us, all of the time, whether in song or in speech or on the page, and we turn to it when events, personal or public, matter most.�
   Duffy, who was born in the Gorbals district of Glasgow but raised in Stafford with her four younger siblings, has described her upbringing as �left-wing, Catholic, working class�. Her mother May was Irish-born and her maternal grandparents came from Carlow and Hacketstown.
   The first holder of her post was the Catholic John Dryden. Appointed by King Charles II in 1668, Dryden was also the only poet laureate sacked, after his refusal to swear the oath of allegiance to Protestant king William III.