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Here's a poem by the new British Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, recently appointed by HM the Queen. Is she worthy of following in the footsteps of William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Masefield? You be the judge: by Carol Ann Duffy
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on dribbling their prose. My living laughing love - I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next best bed.
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John Dryden—1668-88
Thomas Shadwell—1689-92
Nahum Tate—1692-1715
Nicholas Rowe—1715-18
Laurence Eusden—1718-30
Colley Cibber—1730-57
William Whitehead—1757-85
Thomas Warton—1785-90
Henry James Pye—1790-1813
Robert Southey—1813-43
William Wordsworth—1843-50
Alfred, Lord Tennyson—1850-92
Alfred Austin—1896-1913
Robert Bridges—1913-30
John Masefield—1930-67
C. Day-Lewis—1968-72
John Betjeman—1972-84
Ted Hughes—1984-98
Andrew Motion—1999-2009
Carol Ann Duffy—2009-
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