Britain's Poet Laureate

I found this New York Times article amusing. England has selected its first female poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who, one hopes, will not be required to write poetry about Prince Harry's Halloween costumes. Although . . . given Duffy's occasionally comic voice, maybe she would write something wonderful on the subject?

Ms. Duffy would seem to agree. When her name was mentioned for the job 10 years ago, she was quoted as saying: “I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie. No self-respecting poet should have to.”

That was a reference to the marriage of Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, and Sophie Rhys-Jones, which Mr. Motion celebrated in a poem entitled “Epithalamium.” (The poem “has two immediate virtues,” the critic Robert Potts said in The Guardian, “it is very short, and it does not mention the couple.”)