Australia will soon be getting a poet laureate. But what does that actually mean? We sit down with the UK laureate, Simon Armitage, to find out.
Some people sail through their appointment as poet laureate with little to write about.The 61-year-old poet has so far published 25 official poems, covering such nation-defining events as a pandemic, a platinum jubilee, two royal deaths and a coronation.
In 2025, Australia is set to appoint the nation's first poet laureate after the Albanese government announced a $19.3 million plan to establish a new body, Writers Australia, to oversee the appointment.For the first time, the Australian government will sponsor a poet to represent the country, but the details of how they will be selected remain a mystery.But chatting to Armitage — who is in Sydney to attend a series of events for Poetry Month 2024 — gives us a glimpse of what the position could look like in Australia.In the UK, the poet laureate is an honorary position appointed by the monarch under advice from the prime minister. It's an office with a long history. Charles II appointed the first poet laureate, John Dryden, in 1668. Other poets laureate include William Wordsworth, Cecil Day-Lewis and Alfred Lord Tennyson, who held the position for 42 years during the reign of Queen Victoria. Since 1999, the appointment has been limited to 10 years. Armitage was preceded in the position by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish poet who was the first — and, so far, only — female poet laureate. One advantage of the position is the opportunity to reach a wide audience who wouldn't otherwise read poetry. "You get a chance to read those poems on national network radio publish them in newspapers rather than literary magazines," Armitage tellsFrom razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science and culture, Late Night Live puts you in the big picture. Despite its high profile, the role — paid with a barrel of sherry known as a "butt of sack" and a £5,750 annual stipend — comes with no formal duties."There's a misunderstanding that you are a kind of court poet who will write to each royal event." While there is no obligation to produce poetry, Armitage says there is a sense of anticipation among the public for the laureate to respond to significant events. Conquistadors, Armitage's first poem as laureate, commemorated the 1969 Moon landing, while his most recent, Polaris, reflects on the effects of climate change. Armitage has also taken an ambassadorial approach to his laureateship, each spring undertaking a week-long tour of libraries across the UK."I've always been interested in history, state, nationhood, church — the matter of Britain," he says. "And if you get a chance to stand a little bit closer to that … then why wouldn't you want to write about it … in your own way."When Armitage was appointed poet laureate in 2019, the palace gently alerted him to the likelihood that the deaths of certain senior royals would fall within his tenure. However, when news broke of Queen Elizabeth's death in 2022, the poet discarded the notes he had made in preparation.Armitage instead penned a double acrostic poem, which used the image of a lily of the valley — reportedly the queen's favourite flower — to create a floral tribute in verse. "I've always liked the name Elizabeth, and it occurred to me that she probably heard very few people calling her by her actual name … because of all the honorifics that quite often attend her person, and pet names within the family," he explains.Limes and oaks in their last green flush, pearled in September mist.Zones and auras of soft glare framing the brilliant globes.Because of which, here is a gift in return, glovewort to some,The country loaded its whole self into your slender hands,Evening has come. Rain on the black lochs and dark Munros.Interlaced with your famous bouquets, the restrainedA silent bell disguising a singular voice. A blurred new dayEverything turns on these luminous petals and deep roots,Holds and glows beyond the life and border of its bloom. Armitage penned The Patriarchs — An Elegy to mark Prince Philip's death in April 2021, evoking the fortitude and sense of duty that defined the duke's generation. "When I wrote about Prince Philip dying, it was only a few months after my dad had died, who was a similar character … I don't think it would take Freud to see that I was probably writing as much about my dad in that poem," he reflects. Armitage — pictured with Prince Charles in Wales in 2021 — says he no longer holds the radical political views of his youth.An Unexpected Guest, marking the coronation of Charles III and Camilla, takes the perspective of one of the ordinary citizens invited to the ceremony. "I decided to write a poem from the point of view of somebody who got an invite through the post and maybe hadn't been to London many times, and suddenly was in attendance at this incredibly important historic event, and then that night was back in the living room watching telly," Armitage says. An extract from the diary of Samuel Pepys recording his account of another coronation — that of Charles II in 1661 — imbues the poem with the weight of history."I think it's difficult to get away from that in UK poetry, however much you might want to fly off in a different direction."Armitage's latest collection, Blossomise, celebrates the arrival of spring. He believes poets owe much to nature, having drawn on it for inspiration for aeons, and says it's now time for poetry to pay its dues.He has since used his annual stipend to establish the Laurel Prize for the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published in English."What I'm trying to generate in the poems a sense of wonder because to live in this world without wonder would just be calamitous." In Armitage's poem Polar Bear, he observes that the bear's fur coat is "too heavy, too baggy, too hot since the sun got stuck in the sky". In poems such as Polaris, one of a series of poems Armitage wrote after visiting the Arctic in July 2023, the poet engages with climate change directly: "Police are hunting high and low / for the thief who nicked the winter snow."" beautiful but also upsetting and terrifying because everything's melting away … You can just hear the whole thing, drip, drip, drip. "And that's the message that I wanted to bring back: The cascades of rain that are pouring through our cities and our towns and our villages, and the heat which is setting fire to our forests and our woods, all that is coming from up there, and it's magnified up there six or seven times."Armitage — who has described his poetry as "no-brow" — arrived in the literary world as an outsider. In some ways, he's an unlikely candidate for poet laureate given his working-class origins and preference for punk rock.Photo shows An illustration of falling books on a beige background with the ABC logo and text reading The ABC Book Club The ABC's place for readers to talk books — with each other, with books specialists from across the ABC, and with your favourite authors. He studied geography at university, then took a job as a probation officer, like his father before him."In the UK, as soon as you open your mouth, people plot your position on the grid both geographically and in terms of family background, class money. I've always maintained that just to utter one syllable, particularly if it's a vowel, is a political act." Armitage fell in love with poetry at high school when he was a bored kid sitting at the back of the class. "The teacher brought in these little packets of language, which are just black shapes against a white background, and they woke me up. They felt like little acts of primitive magic," he recalls. "Even now, to look at a poem on the page, I'm still reminded that those shapes, if you put them in the right order, can make incredible things happen in other people's heads in complete silence across thousands of miles and across thousands of years. That was definitely an enlightenment moment for me." And now, that young man has become the official poet of the UK, and his work has appeared on the UK school syllabus for 25 years. "Every year in the UK, 400,000 16-year-olds get their sweaty mitts on my poems, and that's an incredible privilege," he says. "School was the place where I started reading poetry … and there's a subconscious ambition that I might be speaking to that same sleepy kid at the back of the class."With whiffs of Peter Dutton, Labor is now using the bad stench around the CFMEU as a weapon against the GreensPhoto shows A photograph of a nebula in space with orange, blue and white swirls of gas, surrounded by starsWith whiffs of Peter Dutton, Labor is now using the bad stench around the CFMEU as a weapon against the GreensIt's one of two copper smelters left in the country. What will happen when the mine next door closes? The AFLW kicks off on Friday night with a double-header — here's all you need to know about the upcoming season
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