UK 's New Poet Laureate

Carol Ann Duffy achieved a number of firsts yesterday. She became the first female, first openly gay, first mother and first Scottish Poet Laureate in the UK. Her books include Rapture, Feminine Gospels and The World's Wife.

The position comes with an annual stipend of £5,760 (which she'll be donating for a poetry prize), plus 650 free bottles of oloroso sherry. Regarding the sherry, Duffy noted "I’ve heard that Andrew Motion (former Poet Laureate) hasn’t had his yet, so I’ll be asking for mine up front.” The duties aren't difficult, but she will be expected to produce poems for royal events, such as weddings or funerals.

The following poem is from Rapture.

You

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger, ready to kill; a flame’s fierce licks under the skin
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone’s face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

Poetry Day

Kay Ryan was recently appointed the 16th Poet Laureate of the United States. The official title is Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. The Librarian of Congress, in consultation with poetry critics and the current Poet Laureate and former appointees, chooses the Poet Laureate for a one-year term which runs from October-May. During their term, the Poet Laureate seeks to increase public awareness of poetry.

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, CA, and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She currently lives in Marin County and teaches at College of Marin in Kentfield. Her books of poetry include, Elephant Rocks, Say Uncle and The Niagara River.

Kay Ryan on poetry: "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading."

Which means that while I liked these three poems because they spoke strongly to me, they may leave you cold. But I hope not.


A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw
the blinds
behind her eyes
whenever she
decides. Nothing
alters in the stare
itself but she's
not there. Likewise
a future can occlude:
still sitting there,
doing nothing rude.

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.

Say Uncle
Every day
you say,
Just one
more try.
Then another
irrecoverable
day slips by.
You will
say ankle,
you will
say knuckle;
why won't
you why
won't you
say uncle?