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| Simon Armitage | |
Simon Armitage has been appointed as the U.K.'s 21st poet laureate, succeeding Carol Ann Duffy. The position "has its roots in the 17th century, when Ben Jonson was granted a pension by King James I for his services to the crown," the Guardian reported, noting that Armitage will receive an annual stipend of £5,750 (about $7,480), "along with the traditional butt of sack: 600-odd bottles of sherry." His tenure will be a fixed term of 10 years.
"It's a big commitment, but if you'd asked me 30 years ago what I want to aim for, this might have been on the list," said Armitage, who has published 28 collections and is one of the U.K.'s bestselling poets. "And I feel I've been writing the kind of public-facing, public-occasion poetry that this role will require for quite a long time now."
He hopes to use the position to "act in an ambassadorial way, as a kind of negotiator between what inevitably is something of a specialist art form, and the people who want to read it and respond on occasions with poetry." Armitage also plans to use his stipend to set up "something in the field of climate change"--either a prize or an event. "It just seems to me that it's the obligation of all of us and every art form to be responding to this issue. It shades into all our politics, so I want to find a way of recording and encouraging poetry's response to that situation."
The hunt for Duffy's successor began last November, when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport appointed a panel of experts to come up with a shortlist, which "is believed to have featured poets including Imtiaz Dharker, Daljit Nagra and Alice Oswald, but Dharker turned the position down to focus on her writing," the Guardian wrote.
"I've done quite a lot of work already, so it's not that I want to retire, [but] I feel as if it's time to give something back," Armitage said. "I've done well through poetry, it's served me well and I think I've served it well, and I think I can encourage other people now setting out on a similar adventure."