A junction in the mind where poetry happens

There is a great opening para or two to the main leader in today's Guardian which focusses on the appointment of Carol Ann Duffy as the new and first female poet laureate:

"Poetry happens at a sort of junction in the mind, says Rowan Williams, a poet himself, at a place where new combinations of words and ideas spring up together. The effect, he adds, can feel like a venture into anarchic territory. Inevitably, some fare better on this voyage into the unknown than others, but poetry's exhilarating imaginative leap is not the preserve of a select few. Everyone has a mind, and millions have felt theirs stirring, whether they have tried to write a poem or been moved by someone else's, or even if they have sought to express themselves in a newspaper editorial in words that sing with a bit of style. The need to express oneself well is part of the human condition.

Carol Ann Duffy, who was named yesterday as the poet laureate, often writes in just the way that the archbishop describes, as here: "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." Those four lines at the start of Ms Duffy's 1993 sonnet 'Prayer' are full of connections and of the unexpected alike."

The news of Duffy's appointment has also been linked with news of the death of UA Fanthorpe, whose quiet Quaker faith is mentioned in the Guardian's obituary and to whom Duffy dedicates a new poem 'Premonitions', also published in today's Guardian.

Here is UA Fanthorpe's 'BC:AD', now a much-loved Christmas poem and one which, like Duffy's 'Prayer' is also "full of connections and of the unexpected alike":

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

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K. D. Lang - Hallelujah.