Duffers gets it

So Carol Ann Duffy is to be the new poet laureate. If there is indeed a future for the role –and there are arguments in its favour – then it’s high time we had a woman at the helm. That said, is Duffy an appropriate choice? She’s the obvious choice, popular (a relative term, perhaps), somewhat more of an intellectual than the smug and superior Wendy Cope, whose cosy and infuriatingly ‘accessible’ work is nevertheless limited and facile.

Why is Cope so highly considered? Beyond me. Sophie Hannah would have been a better bet. When Sophie ‘slags off men’ she does it with real wit and humour, unlike Cope’s dreadful seriousness and dull verses. Cope is so self-satisfied, doesn’t it just make you want to vent your spleen?

But for my money, the ideal candidate was (and is!) Pam Ayres. I’m being serious – she’s unpretentious, seriously funny, and appeals to a large constituency. She’s also genuinely quick-witted – as is attested by her live appearances on Just a Minute, with comedy giants such as Paul Merton and the late and dearly-beloved Clement Freud in the vicinity. I used to be sniffy about Ayres, partly because I felt annoyed that poetry had to be reduced to one-dimension, but in her field she’s a star and would make a great laureate. Either her, or someone like her – or you hit a different register altogether and go for someone serious and magisterial. Geoffrey Hill perhaps (he might just be interested, but he’s a man), or Denise Riley, whose wit and intelligence, and sheer philosophical depth, is breathtaking. She probably wouldn’t want the job though – or would find mischievous ways to undermine the brief.

So we end up with Duffy. I saw her read a few years back, with the late, great Robert Creeley. She read mainly from The World’s Wife, those oh-so-‘witty’ aphorisms about the ‘other halves’ of famous men. Thin stuff indeed, but the mixed-gender audience – in my recollection – far preferred her work to Creeley’s laid-back delivery and oratorical brilliance.

There is something dry and deliberate about her poems. You don’t quite believe in the people in the internal monologues, and you aren’t too interested when she speaks in her own voice. She’s not big enough. And the first thing you see on AbeBooks is the York Notes for A-level students reading The World’s Wife, now ten years old. This is poetry that has already been institutionalized.

She’s the logical choice, but it’s a missed opportunity. Ayres or Riley are the serious options, at either end of the spectrum. Oh, well, the public gets the poet it doesn’t deserve, I guess. C’est la vie! Down at the Café Coup de Poing we shall not be raising a cognac. Sorry, Carol Ann.