Robert McCrum
There’s nothing like a new poet laureate to confirm the choleric longevity of British philistinism. Tony Blair’s “traditionalist” appointment of Andrew Motion has provoked a reaction which shows that, if John Bull is no longer eating beef on the bone, he hasn’t forgotten how to sneer at a poet. The stampede by press, pundits and above all poets to disparage the new laureate has been almost as comically preposterous as the charade of consultation that preceded the nomination.
Among British poets, there seems to be only envious scorn and venom for those who rise to the top of the tree. As Dean Swift put it:
What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he
But rather than they should excel
Would wish his rivals all in Hell?
It’s easy to forget, amid the valedictory paeans for Ted Hughes, that his appointment in 1984 was similarly greeted. The Daily Telegraph wrote that “as our leading nature poet, he might find some sort of inspiration from the wild life of Balmoral”.
Motion is now getting similar treatment. The Daily Telegraph, quoting Pope, characterised him as “so sweetly mawkish, and so smoothly dull”. The London Evening Standard contrived a vicious sequence of the faintest damns: “ceaselessly sensitive”; “porous to influence”; “New Labour could never have appointed anyone else”.
>From the poetry establishment, only Wendy Cope has so far managed to be graceful about Motion’s elevation:”He is a good poet and a likeable person who is generous in his encouragement of others.”
Now that the appointment has been made, it seems obvious, appropriate and well-judged. Motion’s verses on Diana, and his poem In Memory of Ted Hughes, may not, as he insists, have been a job application, but he made no secret of his interest in the position.
Better, surely, to have someone enthusiastic for the post than some cranky conscript. Recall the embarrassments of John Betjeman’s last years, and the case for a younger poet in command of his metier becomes overwhelming.
He has already said that he’s keen “to honour the traditional responsibilities”, but he will reform and redefine the role. “I am,” he says, “very keen to diversify the job, or at least make those poems part of the wider national issues that I also want to write about.”
He says he particularly wants to promote poetry in schools.