Poets Laureate

A friend from Holland recently sent me a chain letter. The email encouraged me to vote for Hagar Peeters (his daughter as it happens, so understandable) as Poet Laureate for The Netherlands .

Why, I wonder would anyone want to take on such an onerous position? The last British one (Andrew Motion) ended up suffering writer's block after his ten year stint and saw it as a thankless job. Several countries have the institution of poet laureate and each is different, although most expect the incumbent to promote poetry and to write some poems for certain occasions. In some cases there is no salary. The British institution of poet laureate famously paid £100 and 'a butt of sack' (108 gallons of sweet wine) a year, although the last poet laureate Andrew Motion was paid £5000 and 650 bottles of sherry. At least the New Zealand one offers a more reasonable $50,000 honorarium. Otago University held an interesting exhibition on the subject of poets laureate, information on which can be found online. It includes information on the Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate.

I had a look at the Dutch short list and read some poems of each one. Apologies to readers who don't read Dutch. I found I could not vote for any one of them. When I read their poems, I find that they are unnecessarily mystifying and abstruse (I mean, why not just say: puzzling). Their poems remind me of my own early efforts, later not continued.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poet Laureate, wrote the following "Populist Manifesto" (as he himself called it) in 1970 addressed to poets:

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds
. . . .
No time now for the artist to hide
above, beyond, behind the scenes,
indifferent, paring his fingernails,
refining himself out of existence.
No time now for our little literary games,
for our paranoias and hypochondrias,
no time now for fear & loathing,
time now only for light & love.
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings
. . . .

His was a call, he later wrote, "for a universal poetry with ... 'public surface' — a poetry with a very accessible commonsensual surface that can be understood by most everyone without a very literary education." He admitted, however, that if it was to 'rise above the level of journalism, it must have other subjective and/or subversive levels.' (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Foundation, 2001, Poet Laureate Series Number 1), pages 17-18).

I find I have developed great appreciation for simple language. There is an art in saying exactly what you mean succinctly and clearly. Poems should do so in a way that leaves you feeling satisfied that there's something more here than meets the eye, or that carries enough meaning to keep you pondering. One poet who did this expertly is Hone Tuwhare (mentioned in a previous blog). The two poets who had been previous poets laureate for the Netherlands also succeeded in this. And the English choices have not been too bad. A good friend of mine, a New Zealand poet, also invariably succeeds in saying beautiful things simply. For example:

Silver and grey

The difference between silver and grey
is a whiff of wind;
between silver and blue,
a thin white mist that hides the sky.

Waters, mirrors, harbour, tides —
my home is a place of watching:
constant change within the constancy
of hills and sea and a house
perched within, above, beside.

It doesn't speak to me:
my presence is a mystery, insignificant;
but if I will, I can see myself reflected,
I can take in the real-world rhythms
of sun and moon and turning earth
that give a true perspective
to the mercurial sensivities of humanness

that in its pleasure seems to touch the stars,
in its despair would sink into the earth;
and at times it seems a whiff of wind
is all it takes to make the difference.

Miriam Richardson, Something to write home about; Dunedin poems (Peninsula Press, 1994), page 28

I wish the yet to be appointed poets laureate for the United Kingdom and for The Netherlands all the best, but it's a job I would not wish on an enemy, let alone on the daughter of a friend. So I will not be voting.