Lesley Riddoch: Poet for Queen and country must walk a fine line

Not easy for a woman who said "no self-respecting poet" would write a poem for Edward and Sophie's wedding in 1999.

This weekend, though, Ms Duffy's thinking appears to have changed.

"Apparently I said that. I think we are a bit more grown up this time around.

"Poetry is all about imagination, looking at the ordinary and transforming it. In a sense royalty does that. I am not a kind of monarchist, but I like the monarchy. If I had an idea for a poem about a royal wedding I would do it."

In many ways this is fine and dandy. Ms Duffy's ten-year tenure of the top poetry job will be a happy one if she is genuinely positive about most royal and state occasions. Even when they are as double-edged as the Queen's Speech, possible English victory in the World Cup or the certain London Olympic Games – whose cost by 2012 may have caused a northern revolt.

Is it possible to transform the job of sycophant-in-chief into national writer-not-in-residence?

To be the People's Laureate, Duffy must stay counter-cultural and air the anti-authoritarian streak of her own (and her native country's) make-up. She must sometimes ignore the Big Moments of the hereditary classes.

To be the traditional Laureate she must strive to find worth in all things royal or government-backed. The choice is certainly not a walk in Regent's Park and Ms Duffy's dilemma reflects our own dilemma about the way we honour talent.

As Poet Laureate Carol Ann will earn a meagre 5,750 – she's already donated that to the Poetry Society. But of course the honour of being the first woman, the first Scottish-born, the first openly gay Laureate is beyond monetary value. And there's the rub. The huge collection of firsts amassed by this talented woman speaks volumes about the kind of people who've been awarded the job before.

The kind of people who don't regard a salary of 5,000 as an insult. The kind of people with private income or (far more likely) such low expectations of earning anything from poetry they've decided to make do and mend. Long since.

According to outgoing laureate Andrew Motion the 5,000 he received from Buckingham Palace paid his stamp bill.

Creative work may be performed by stars, sampled by top bands, quoted by politicians, read by pupils or distributed by Google. But artists will hardly see a red cent for their trouble.

And since few artists are financially motivated, few will complain.

The truth is that Scottish writers, poets and painters who are household names are almost too hard up and ground down to attend distant events celebrating their talent. And too embarrassed to say so.

5k a year for our most honoured poet. Oh yes, and 600 bottles of sherry too.

Some may regard that as quaint.

Some may compare that salary with the 24k per annum declared by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley on last week's Question Time for 12 days non-executive work a year. Let's hope Ms Duffy has a generous travel budget and a way with booking travel that defeats some MPs.

Above all, let's hope she provokes us.

Carol Ann Duffy could provoke debate about the everyday poverty of artists by demanding the minimum wage. Or appear on motorway hard shoulders to thumb long-distance lifts with a sign Buckingham Palace please (penniless poet travelling).

Or she could sit during the Loyal Toast. Why does any self respecting citizen actually stand? Conformity? Fear of offending? Habit? It doesn't do any harm?

Great harm is done by devaluing social custom. It's precisely the unbidden and automatically volunteered gestures and marks of respect that distinguish a nation. The Scots – once reduced to custom and gesture alone as expressions of nationhood – should understand that.

So let's celebrate our first Poet Laureate in almost 400 years with a spring clean. People were generally happy to stand and toast the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns in January. And happy to sing a Man's a Man at Holyrood's opening ten years ago instead of some limp "state" chorus. How empty by contrast is the Loyal Toast to a woman who earns respect largely for her commitment to a system that perpetuates the existence of haves and have-nots and enshrines the principle of inheriting rather than creating wealth and social status?

What would it be like to accept a people's honour? No-one knows, except perhaps the winners of The X Factor.

The immense popularity of such TV talent shows is causally linked to the public's lack of involvement in the creation of real civic value. People have energy, views, opinions and talent – very little of which is harnessed by the state. Most mainland European countries have tiny but relatively powerful units of town and village government. Here centralisation is the name of the game and the public are viewed as dodgy, biddable, untrustworthy and "off message."

Life is lived at the "top" and yet the top is inaccessible.

The Act of Settlement still keeps Catholics off the throne and House of Lords reforms have stalled.

The hereditary principle is so outdated it is laughable and attempts to modernise the structure threaten the entire edifice with collapse.

Until we are citizens not subjects the trappings of British and Scottish democracy will continue to fit as well as medieval strait jackets.

Carol Ann Duffy is a brilliant writer. And her real honour is that schoolchildren love her work – the inventiveness, cheekiness and knowingness of it.

Let's trust that in ten years time, we can say exactly the same.