so tell me sean what do yu think about carol ann duffy being appointed poet laureate?

i was asked what d'you think bout Carol Ann Duffy being appointed poet laureate? here is my reply. unedited. as it just roarpoured out. apologies to anyone i have/nt offended. cut me off from yr email list. or tell me why i am wrong. or write yr own in response. other than that hope yr having a good mayday mayday. sean
writers like regular motion/s, sophie hannah, roddy lumsden. mr and mrs shapcott-patterson (or is that patterson-shapcott?) - absolutely loathe them. people like carol ann duffy merely bore me. i mean she's not bad - liked her onion poem, and the whole book pulping thing about knifeboy (it wasnt) was ridiculous - what lesson is that for our children? people like her have everything (lemn sissay, jackie kay, benjamin zephaniah, john hegley too) and they waste it, really really waste it, setting their horizons so low - are so easily pleased - they have our attention, we are listening - they could really challenge, transgress, really entertain, reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally have fun. now anne carson, nicole brossard, merle collins, tom leonard, nicos vassilakis, annie clarkson, inger christensen, maggie o'sullivan, john giorno, dianne darby, rokia traore, myra davis, liza carthy, dionne brand etc etc - theyre really trying, striving, experimenting, pushing, stretching, challenging, shaping. and having fun with language. as for poet laureate? should be abolished like the keeper of the queens music. the system was corrupt from the start - designed to patronise the right kind of language - and after 300tears i mean years kingblair rebrands it where the mild things and oh so tho scared of 'how a lesbian might play in midfield or possible midddddle england' so we get this ridiculous fudge in the worst sense, blur in the very worst sense of some system of unclear patronage designed to reward vaguely the mediocre and have a wee manifesto of sorts. and the writing so mediocre. abolish it. abolish it now. it does nothing for poetry. nothing for language. it certainly does nothing for the individual poet. or their poetry. if only the govt had the guts to abolish it then hand it over to something like the childrens laureate. imagine that! a group of writers actually getting together with a sum of money and then saying right - we are electing yu, electing! - for a fixed term. and in that - yu have to set up a series of 'things' - events, whatevers, - that really promote fun and excitement and danger and happiness and beauty and all to children - giving them expanded, hugely expanded horizons. and please do campaign. please do bang on about something that pisses yu off. please do. think. do but poetry has to be kept in its wee box - and controlled. and someone like carol ann duffy (and all ive ever seen from her of her about her is shes a nice woman, an honest woman, a genuine woman, one who wants to write - somehow or other queen and country (and it still is queen despite what downing street says) seduce her - something like its better being inside the tent and pissing out than outside the tent and pissing in is i think the phrase - and she seriously thinks that in such a hidebound tradition she can actually make a wee difference. the press - and we know who they are - will snide/snigger/demand/cajole etc etc etc poems on prince william coming out, brave harrys latest racism, the death of the immigrantscroungerprincephil - i might have got their precise wordings on those things wrong! - and they will witter and twitter and call her a disgrace if she doesnt stick to the template of three hundred years of MEN. and to make a wee statement that this laureateship is now 'doing something for women' - when its not - its well done wee wifie, yu can have ten years in the sun (a bit), and the mirror, and the telegraph - but then expect to spend another 300 years below. and the poetry published in celebration of it - what poetry? june jordans i liked (apart from the clunking first two lines). but poetry to me is music/musical/musicality; a condensed/heightened/liberated/challenging view/vision; and saying something that is unique to that sayer/seer - something only they could express in that way. when its mediocre prose chopped into random lines in the approved english lang/lit TM method - theres the approved enjambment, and here the reverse villanelle, oh and there a postmodernity referring to one who previously trod the path, ooh and a bit of personal revelation like lowell/sexton et all never happened, and all brought down to the lowest common denominator and blairtender-blenderisered to mushmush - but a safe homogeneised, low-fat, govt approved mush then - sorry but it sickens me. its what we were talking about out at yrs - that the human animal needs stories to survive. if we have now come to the point that our language is so sanitised and we are so disinherited then maybe its time to let go and hand over the planet to the octopi. (in about 120million years theyll be the dominant species - just wait and see!) sorry but THE laureateship is so patronising, so profoundly offensive in every aspect of its creation and accretion, its a blackhole sucking all into it - doesnt matter what spaceship carol ann duffys in she'll still get sucked in. and it will be painful to watch. now that weve made poverty history (g20 said so) - maybe we should make poetry history? or pottery? leave us to get on with singing, breathing ... in my wee opinionated opinionised opinion thats what i think on the laureateship!