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South Specific
- Andrew Motion et al
‘Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they
ran through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun. Not
any more they don't; I've filled them up with countless different
kinds of human crap.’
When Richard The Lionheart made Guglielmus Peregrinus
his official ‘poet laureate’ he didn’t mean
the post to be used for spiky poems that tacitly criticize
the country’s foreign policy. Since then the post has
been held by some of the greatest figures in British literary
history, from Chaucer to Dryden, from Jonson to Wordsworth,
from John Masefield to Ted Hughes. Andrew Motion, the current
holder of the most prestigious position in British poetry,
wrote the lines that prefix this article as a protest about
the illegal invasion of Iraq by British and American troops.
Motion later stated that he saw his remit ‘to write
about events in the royal calendar as and when I can, but
also to write about matters of national interest.’ It’s
an interesting take by Motion on the responsibilities of his
job, and an issue he will no doubt address in the reading
and public interview he is giving as the finale of this year’s
South Specific literature weekend.
Also included in today’s package, which includes a number
of workshops for writers, are crime bestseller Peter James,
satirical crime writer Peter Guttridge, memoirists Ciaran
O’Driscoll and Debbie Taylor, non-fiction art specialist
Debbie Roe, and poet, dramatist and translator Sasha Dugdale.
AL
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