Scots defend ‘Mills & Boon’ poet laureate

Published on Wednesday 1 February 2012 00:00

SCOTTISH writers have come to the defence of poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy following a scathing public attack by Oxford University’s professor of poetry, who compared her work to “Mills & Boon”.

Speaking at a lecture entitled “Poetry, Policing and Public Order”, Sir Geoffrey Hill criticised the Glasgow-born poet for attempting to “democratise” the art form by claiming that children using text messaging and social network sites were “perfecting” their poetry skills.

He also attacked the quality of an early work by the award- winning poet about the death of an English teacher.

Sir Geoffrey said it was of a standard that “could be easily be mistaken for a first effort by one of the young people she wishes to encourage”.

He said Duffy’s work was of “democratic English pared to its barest bean and I could not have the moral courage to write so”, adding that the type of writing was similar to that “employed by writers for Mills & Boon”.

Sir Geoffrey also criticised the 56-year-old’s defence of the rising use of “text speak” among young people as a type of poetry.

Duffy was unavailable for comment, but award-winning Fife based poet John Burnside came to her defence.

He said: “She’s a very fine poet. So I think attacking her is a bit pointless really, she’s not somebody abusing the English language by any means. She’s given us some of the best lyrical poems in the past 50 years.”

Fellow Fife-based poet Ian Nimmo Smith said of Sir Geoffrey: “If he thinks there is a finite line to English when it comes to writing poetry, then he doesn’t know as much about poetry as he thinks he does.”

Robyn Marsack, head of the Scottish Poetry Centre, said: “The attention paid is a testament to the passion poetry continues to inspire.”

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Tartancult

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:32 AM

The woman is not a poet, her work is dreadful.

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