Laureate by competition
Sir: Who should be the next Poet Laureate? Forget costive librarians and Angry Old Men. The answer lies under your nose. Spectator literary competition reports frequently offer three or four admirable poems, whose subject matter was decreed, arbitrarily enough from the candidates' point of view, only two weeks before. (I admit an interest; some are mine.) Here, then, are England's true occasional poets. Note the contrast: conventional poets await a call from Parnassus dictating both theme and treatment. Spectator competitors, who shamelessly buttonhole the Muse whether she is in a generous mood or not, show themselves equal to writing dirges on a soaring bank rate or prothalamia on Prince Andrew's latest young lady as events demand. Might I respectfully urge the Queen and her counsellors to send for back numbers of the Spectator (assuming, which is most unlikely, that it is not taken in by Buckingham Palace already)? You might sponsor a grand poetomachia or poetathlon, events to include `An Ode of Thanksgiving for Deliverance from Argentina', a 'Hymn of Hate Against Gaddafi', and a Petrarchan sonnet on Prince Philip's Presidency of the World Wildlife Fund. The prosody paper would feature such questions as Dr Folliott's poser in Crotchet Castle: 'What metres will successively remain, if you take off the first three syllables, one by one, from a pure antispastic acatalectic tetrameter?'
Charles Mosley
2 Riverview Mansions, Clevedon Road, East Twickenham, Middlesex
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