Female poets recoil from Laureate role

The campaign to give Britain its first female Poet Laureate, reported in The First Post last month, has been dealt a decisive blow, with three of the five leading contenders ruling themselves out because they don't, to put it bluntly, think it's worth the trouble. Among the refuseniks is Wendy Cope, best-selling author of Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, who is adamant about not succeeding the present incumbent, Andrew Motion, when he steps down in 2009 after a 10-year stint. She says: "Personally I feel it is an archaic post and means nothing. It's simply not important. It comes from the media this idea of writing royal poems. Andrew Motion had been doing a very good job writing royal poems without making a fool of himself, but he should not be in that position."

Two other women poets who had been tipped for the role, Fleur Adcock and Ruth Padel, are like-minded, but for different reasons. Adcock thinks that quite apart from the extra work it involves, the role continues to command a very meagre salary. She told the Independent: "It's terribly hard work for very little pay."

The fee for taking on the grand title is still just £5,000 a year, although the ancient tradition of a "butt of sack per annum" (or, to be more prosaic, 700 bottles of sherry) was reinstated by Motion. Even these perks could not sway Padel, the chair of the UK Poetry Society, who said she thought most poets worth their salt would give the post a wide berth. "I think every good poet would have the same answer: that you'd be wary about your work," she said. "There are other things to consider, such as what it would mean for a woman to do it, and what it could do for poetry in the community to make it more loved, but you'd be worried you wouldn't be able to write what you wanted to."

All this may or not be good news for the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, whom many consider to be the chief contender and who has not yet ruled herself out. She was a favourite for the job back in 1998 when Motion was appointed, but her status then as the mother of a young child and as a woman in a lesbian relationship made her wary of taking up such a prominent national position. It was also suggested that Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, vetoed Duffy because he was concerned about her domestic arrangements. ·