Britain's Poet Laureate Takes on MP Expense Scandal

Posted on June 12, 2009

Britain's first female poet laureate Carol Duffy has debuted her first poem for the nation and it's already raising eyebrows. Entitled "Politics" the poem depicts the corrosive nature of corruption and how it destroys idealism. The poem refers to the expense scandal that is currently rocking Britain. Britain's MPs have been submitting expenses for such things as a castle moat repair, new chandeliers and hours of porn movies. The scandal has already ruined quite a few careers.

John Sutherland, professor emeritus of modern English literature at University College London, called it an angry poem. "The motive force here is disgust. Disgust at the great machine and its dishonest mechanics who run our society. Duffy Furiosa. The poem's technique is that of someone almost speechless with rage - a great tumbling catalogue. No time for structure."
He said he rather regretted the fact that Duffy had given the poem a title "because it's not until close to the end that this great heap-of-crap which has so got Duffy's goat is identified."

Here is the poem:

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this -

politics - to your education education education; shouts this -

Politics! - to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.