New Poet Laureate

Carol Ann Duffy is the new poet laureate taking over from Andrew Motion. I heard her say that she is not a person of faith but she says she misses the Catholic liturgy of her childhood. People who pray, she mused, have the benefit that they have someone to speak to and she also said interestingly '...I think poetry is secular prayer' [speaking on Radio 4]

Here is one of her poems on exactly that subject.

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. 2 Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(C.A. Duffy, 1993, Mean Time, London, Anvil Press)