No one seems to know who will or should fill the inestimably vast boots of Edwin Morgan, who was the greatest living Scottish poet, when he died. His position as Makar is now open, but as it was custom-made for him, no one else is quite right (yet) for it, and new tailorings need to be applied, it seems. Enter the usual roll call of prize-winning names, as per The Guardian piece. Not mentioned in the Guardian piece were Roddy Lumsden, Richard Price, John Glenday, Jen Hadfield, WN Herbert, AB Jackson, or Robert Crawford - but adding them to the list that was given, of Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie, Douglas Dunn, Liz Lochhead, Robin Robertson, Jackie Kay, and John Burnside - shows the richness of the potential short-list. I suspect either Dunn, Paterson or Robertson will get this, ultimately - but Herbert follows most closely in the steps of Morgan as inventive explorer.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
Comments
If I were the Makar Maker I would definitely give it to Kathleen Jamie. However, since I don't have a drop of Scottish blood in my veins, I don't suppose that my opinions will count for much!
Best wishes from Simon