Word: poets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...only took 341 years but, finally, Britain has a female Poet Laureate. Carol Ann Duffy will hold the 10-year post, following in the formidable footsteps of the likes of William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Ted Hughes. Glasgow-born Duffy, 53, said she had thought "long and hard" before accepting the high-profile job, and gave the final say to her 13-year-old daughter. Her response? "She said, 'Yes mummy, there's never been a woman.'" Now Duffy, who once said "no self-respecting poet" should have to write about royal weddings (she was referring...
...fund a new prize for the best collection published each year. As for the "butt of sack" - the 600 bottles of sherry traditionally given to the laureate - Duffy has asked for delivery up front, after learning that Motion hasn't received his yet. (Read: "A Brief History Of The Poet Laureate...
...Duffy was a candidate for the prestigious position ten years ago, but narrowly missed out due to, observers believe, concerns over her lesbian relationship with fellow Scottish poet Jackie Kay. Indeed, there were also suggestions that former Prime Minister Tony Blair thought her sexuality may not play well in Middle England - a notion that would surely amuse Duffy, considering one of her best known works is titled Poet for our Times...
...Female poets have long been in the running for the post: As far back as 1850, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered for the laureateship after Wordsworth's death, but it passed on to Tennyson instead. However, in choosing how to announce her new job Friday morning, Duffy made sure her snubbed predecessors weren't forgotten. The name of the BBC program on which she broke the historic news? Woman's Hour. (Read about America's busiest poet, Kay Ryan...
...small statue, one of several that he claimed to have stolen four years earlier from the Louvre. The anonymous thief turned out to be a bisexual con man named Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret. He had once served as "secretary," and perhaps other roles, for Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet and art-world polemicist who was Picasso's constant supporter in the public skirmishes over modern art in the French press. Before long, Pieret had implicated Apollinaire in the thefts. When police arrested Apollinaire, he admitted under pressure that Pieret had sold the pilfered works to none other than Picasso. Thinking...