Carol Ann Duffy and Geoffrey Hill: truly poetic heavyweights

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/carol-ann-duffy-geoffrey-hill-punch-up

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No sooner are Judith Palmer, the Poetry Society director, and Fiona Sampson, the Poetry Review editor, out of the news than another poetry punch-up enters the ring. This time it's two grandees of the literary world. Geoffrey Hill, the Oxford professor of poetry, in the blue corner, throws a slug at Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, in the red corner: at a lecture in Oxford, Hill likened Duffy to a Mills & Boon writer.

Hill demeans himself. After 350 years of male dominance. Duffy is the first female poet laureate. Hill's comparison of the language of Duffy to Mills & Boon is like a man in the 1950s comparing the first female managing director to a jumped-up office angel.

2012 is a big year for poetry. Simon Armitage's Poetry Parnassus at London's Southbank Centre will bring one poet from each Olympic country. William Sieghart's Winning Words sees poems etched into structures throughout the Olympic site and the country. The aim of Parnassus is that poets meet and read together. The aim of Winning Words is that we see and encourage poetry in public spaces. Emphasis on "together". Emphasis on "public spaces". So why can't our poets be together in public spaces for the greater good of team poetry? Why do poets find it difficult to be part of a team?

Poets are fighters. In the 1940s Muriel Spark wrote Loitering with Intent, in which she reflected on her time at The Poetry Society, presenting it as a dysfunctional organisation full of petty squabbling and self-interest. Peter Barry's Poetry Wars documents the six-year stint during which the Poetry Review journal was taken over by radical poets. In 2010 The Poetry Society went into meltdown, with resignations, legal threats, illnesses, emergency committees and management take overs. Every 30 years it kicks off.

Poets like to slug it out bout for bout. Derek Walcott, Ruth Padel, Alice Oswald, Benjamin Zephaniah and Adrian Mitchell have all been involved in public spats. One thing binds all these great artists. Their singularity. They may have chosen the ode less travelled, but they'll mow you down in a beat.

A poet is by nature not a team player. There's no "I" in team but then there's no "U" either. Was it a poet who said "Let's not talk about me, let's talk about you", only to then pause and ask: "What do you really think about me?"

I, for one, don't want poets to be part of a team. I want them as natural as they can be. Poets are at the heart of revolution because revolution is the heart of the poet. Poets see things because they won't look anywhere else. They are single-minded in their pursuit of the poem.

Would we really want our poets to agree by some form of poetry committee? The radical poets always challenge the classicists, and vice versa. And the new poets must always challenge the radicals. It's like an un-merry go round. As the world turns to democracy, revolutionary movements quote poets to celebrate their causes. But poets are a democracy in a nation of one. Their nation is the page.

Duffy comes from a great tradition that has laid the ground for the generation of the moment. With a whole new crop of young writers like Caroline Bird, Inua Ellams, Kate Tempest, Ben Mellor and Luke Wright in the making, this year could be the best for poetry since the mid-60s, when Ginsberg played the Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, in response to Hill Duffy might post him her collection, The World's Wife. Better still, could she text him the ISBN link so he could one-click-order it from Amazon via Kindle and download it onto his iPad. Then he can upload his review via a Facebook status update, which should be synched to his tweets, and hopefully it'll trend. Can poets be part of a team? When I look at Geoffrey Hill in one corner of the ring and Carol Ann Duffy in the other, I sincerely hope not.

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