Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureate? How terribly risque! How politically correct can we get? A Scottish lesbian lecturer with a kid from working class Glasgow and a big ugly mush. The only trouble is that she is, in my view, a very ordinary poet who fails to move me very much or impress me with her predictable linguistic dexterity. Today many words have been said and written about her but below I give you one of her poems - after all this is why she has been appointed isn't it? Maybe not. I see little merit in such oily self-indulgence. Perhaps readers of this post could enlighten me.

Words, Wide Night
by Carol Ann Duffy

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I am singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

No Carol Ann, don't cross it out and say it is sad - just cross it out and chuck it in the bin! And another thing... why isn't she just simply Carol Duffy? What's with the pretentious insertion of Ann? Most of us have middle names but never use them in everyday communication. Did she have to separate herself from Carol Duffy the all-in wrestler or Carol Duffy the Gorbals pawnbroker? Myself, I'd have gone for Roger McGough who has in his own way moved me and has also done much to win young people over to poetry during his fifty years as a writer...even pre-dating the Merseyside scene of the early sixties in which he played his part - influencing to some small degree the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney.