Poet Laureate

She'll be paid in sterling so we can assume that she'll be working across the pond.

[broken link removed]
 
Ah its a Brit thing - a Scottish Labour PM and a female Scottish (Labour supporting ?) PL.

So it works the same way as stuff does here at home.
 
Touché, Mathepac.



I reckon the closest we'd ever get to one here would be by appointing some kind of a Chief Bard. I just took the following (edited) from Wikipedia-

In medieval Gaelic society, a bard was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord. If the employer failed to pay the proper amount, the bard would then compose a satire.

I wonder what would happen if we had one from Offaly and he/she didn't get paid fully for his/her eulogy and, to add insult to injury, had to pay pension and health levies on top of it as well!

Would he/she compose a satire? Or would he/she just hire an artist to do a painting instead...........?
 
... In medieval Gaelic society, a bard was a professional poet, employed to compose eulogies for his lord. ...
According to family tradition, one of my ancestors was a bard who visited all kinds of ridicule and satire on his patron after payment for a composition failed to materialise. Such was the embarrassment suffered by the patron that the family emigrated from their rich Munster pasture lands and settled in some very poor, remote, bogland. The name of the place they moved to is Móin Alúine in Irish and the patron's Anglicised family name begins with a C (or a B in some circles)...

The bill remains unpaid, not that we have long memories or anything.
One of my cousins is a well-known (house) painter, not Adolf Hitler or Brendan Behan...
 
This was not a trick question. I am genuinely interested why women never got this honour. I appreciate the female sex have been at great disadvantage in times past to achieve equality in areas like the law, medicine etc but did not know such discrimation extended to the literary field. Really i intended it to be a serious question
 
Didn't CJH hire Anthony Cronin as something like Chief Bard at the outrageous rate of £1540 per day, back in the 80s?