{"id":1620,"date":"2009-06-17T17:56:47","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T21:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2009-06-17T17:56:47","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T21:56:47","slug":"brit-poet-laureate-takes-piss-out-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/brit-poet-laureate-takes-piss-out-of-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Brit Poet Laureate takes Piss out of Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"carolannduffy\"<\/a>Carol Ann Duffy has just published her first poem as Britain’s new & first woman poet laureate. Who would notice first \u2014 the French, of course: I came across this reading Pierre Assouline’s excellent Le Monde blog, La R\u00e9publique des Livres<\/a> (but then I don’t read many brit papers these days). As Assouline points out, the phrase “moral compass” refers no doubt to Gordon Brown & his troubles. Duffy’s may not be the most radical poem of the year, the righteous anger it\u00a0 throws in the faces of politicians may not be original news, still, it is admirable verse from the Queen’s own poeta. The title of the poem is, of course, “Politics” \u2014 which unhappily (as PA also notes) gives away too much to begin with, undermining the tension the non-specific “it” of the poem builds up until the last line.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow it makes of your face a stone<\/em><\/p>\n

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,<\/em><\/p>\n

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue<\/em><\/p>\n

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand<\/em><\/p>\n

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh<\/em><\/p>\n

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs<\/em><\/p>\n

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice<\/em><\/p>\n

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath<\/em><\/p>\n

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,<\/em><\/p>\n

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,<\/em><\/p>\n

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

politics \u2013 to your education education education; shouts this \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

Politics! \u2013 to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your<\/em><\/p>\n

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol Ann Duffy has just published her first poem as Britain’s new & first woman poet laureate. Who would notice first \u2014 the French, of course: I came across this reading Pierre Assouline’s excellent...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,1],"tags":[212,223,608],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-uncategorized","tag-britain","tag-carol-ann-duffy","tag-poet-laureate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}