Apr

4

Rest On Your Laureates. (Part 1)

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 4, 2008 |

Some time ago someone asked me, How do you become Poet Laureate? It’s not an easy question, mainly because there are a lot of Poets Laureate. The official Poet Laureate, the first, would be Britain’s Poet Laureate. Ben Jonson was the first to be appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate by James I in 1616, beginning with a small pension. In 1630 the pension was increased by the addition of a “butt of Canary wine”. After Jonson’s death in 1637 (hopefully not from too much wine) the post remained vacant for sixteen months until Sir William Davenant filled it. Shortly after Davenant’s death John Dryden filled the post and it became an official royal position. Dryden was dismissed for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to Mary II and her husband William III, who deposed James II. Dryden is the only Poet Laureate to be removed from the office. Most of the poets who held the post are fairly obscure. Read any Thomas Shadwell, Nachum Tate, or Alfred Austin lately? Some pretty big names have had the job too, though. William Wordsworth, who received some scathing criticism from Robert Browning, was appointed to the job by Queen Victoria. Sir John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, and the current Poet Laureate Andrew Motion are all well-motion.jpgknown, well-respected poets. Motion even revived the tradition of writing poems for special occasions, including Princess Diana’s death, become a sort of de facto Poet Laureate even before he was granted the position.

The passing of Ted Hughes in 1998 caused a bit of controversy. Hughes had held the post since 1984. When replacements were being considered, Christopher Reid, poetry editor at Faber & Faber, said, ”It seems to me a pretty pointless kind of job.” Maybe he regretted those words–Faber & Faber was and still is Andrew Motion’s publisher, after all–or maybe he didn’t. The job paid about $165 per year and a case of Spanish sherry, although there would also be publicity. And there were some surprising contenders for the job, or at least some surprising names thrown around: Nobel Prize Laureates Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy (one of my favorites), and Wendy Cope, who wrote this poem:

The Loss

The night he moved out was terrible.
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn’t the problem,
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

Clearly she would have appreciated the case of sherry.


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