THE poet laureateship is a British institution in which one of the leading poets of the country is appointed a member of the Royal household and given a pension. In return traditionally, the poet commemorates major state events such as coronations or royal weddings in poetry. Until recently the appointment was for life, but is now limited to 10 years.
The term of the current laureate is almost up and there is a small fuss about the next appointment. The fact is that someone has noticed that in 360 years of the laureateship there has never been a single woman laureate.
Oscar Wilde wrote about orphans that to lose one parent can be considered a misfortune, but to lose both seems like carelessness. To ignore women for a century or even two might count as chauvinism, but 360 years is verging on wittiness. One theory very popular on the continent is that the British tradition of all male boarding schools places permanent hurdles in their abilities to understand women. This is not very convincing though it is more believable than the earlier continental theory which argued that the fog and damp weather (and the resulting heavy clothing) caused many Englishmen to be entirely ignorant of the fact that women existed.
In any case even the first woman prime minister of UK Margaret Thatcher chose a man to be the poet laureate. Having said that, those old enough to remember probably know that Dame Thatcher was only a woman prime minister in the sense that Musharraf is a civilian president. Which is to say, the claim though technically and legally true, is substantially irrelevant. Not all male laureates have been roaring successes either.
One was fired when he refused to swear loyalty to the king, a few, after their appointment gave up writing altogether. During the Iraq war, the current laureate wrote anti-war poems. Another disaster was avoided when poet Phillip Larkin declined the honor.
He is famous for writing what is probably the most widely quoted English poem of the last century which goes ‘They F*** you up, your Mom and Dad’. I am not sure how he would have chosen to commemorate state events such as the marriage of Charles and Camilla.
There is a great enthusiasm in Pakistan for importing foreign institutions and ‘best practices’ wholesale without going through the excessive effort of thinking or reflecting about suitability. There is some danger that some official file already contains a proposal for our own laureate, perhaps even a woman laureate to enhance our soft image and steal a march on the brits.
This would be a major mistake. For one thing, what state occasions would our laureate commemorate? Ode to the Emergency though a hot and exciting title would be out of date before it got to the printing press. O moderate and enlightened homeland would be another damp squib. Any poet writing to celebrate either democracy or a military ‘decade of development’ would be in serious trouble before long.
Which brings me to the point which is that we have our own tried and tested methods for encouragement of poetry. It is perhaps high time that we exported some of our own institutions and best practices to foreign countries.
Our local recipe for polishing poetic talent is simple: A longish jail term, official discouragement followed by exile provided the poet shows some progress in the intervening phases. We should immediately propose to the British government that after appointing their next laureate (a women if they so wish), they should sentence this person to 5-6 years in jail during which all works by them should be banned.
This is almost guaranteed to stimulate interest in poetry. The poetic momentum generated by jail time can be maintained after release by periodic official harassment and media based character assassination. And, if the laureate shows true promise, a prolonged exile can be the crowning stage of the laureateship. Obviously this package is superficially not as attractive as tea at Buckingham Palace and a pension. But poets despite reputations to the contrary are notoriously tough characters. The very act of poetry requires a robust rejection of society’s view of nearly everything. Frankly speaking, tea at Buckingham Palace places the modesty of the queen in peril without in any way encouraging poetry. In this, Pakistan is well ahead.
By Yasser Hashmi,
Courtesy Dawn
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