On January 20, 1961, the day of John F. Kennedy's inauguration, Robert Frost is due to read the poem he has been commissioned to write. At eighty-six, he has written “Dedication” for the occasion. But the sun glares off the snow and onto the page; dazzled, he cannot read his manuscript. So he recites an older poem from memory, “The Gift Outright”.

It is the first time a poet has spoken at an inauguration. In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, there is a role for this: the poet laureate, a poet officially chosen by an institution to write for the major events of the country or the region.

From Degree to Office

The title first came from the university. At the end of the fifteenth century, John Skelton was made “poet laureate” by Oxford, then by the universities of Louvain and Cambridge: it was a degree in rhetoric. He also became court poet to Henry VII, who gave him a garment embroidered in silk and gold with the name Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. Later, Skelton attacked the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey in his satires; to escape arrest, he took refuge in Westminster Abbey, where he ended his days.

In 1668, John Dryden became the first officially appointed laureate. The laurel was no longer a degree: it was an office.

Work to Hand In

For a long time, this office had its calendar: an ode for the New Year, another for the sovereign's birthday, set to music and performed before him. A small breach of the rules: in 1843, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth accepted the title on one condition, that nothing be asked of him. And it was granted. The salary, for its part, long remained £200 a year, plus a butt of wine.

In the United States, the Library of Congress created a post of “Consultant in Poetry” in 1937, which became “Poet Laureate” in 1985. It is not the president who makes the appointment, but the Librarian of Congress. The laureate receives $35,000, and no praise is required.

Andrew Motion, appointed British laureate in 1999, secured a ten-year term instead of a post for life, and £5,000 a year. The Queen and Tony Blair each assured him that he did not have to do anything, while letting him understand that they expected something. Motion admits it: the post took away the time he needed to write his own poems.

Liz Lochhead, Scotland's Makar from 2011 to 2016, experienced the opposite:

Sometimes a poem being demanded of me gave me the impetus to write a piece on a theme I would never have thought of and to surprise myself. In fact, some of my commissioned pieces have become favourite poems of mine.¹

Another Story

Two and a half years after the inauguration, on October 26, 1963, four weeks before he was assassinated, Kennedy paid tribute to Frost, who had died earlier that year. The poet, he said, “saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself”:

When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. […] When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

To remind power of its limits is also to refuse the flattering story it would like to hear. The poet can, or must, offer another one: a truer, more human story.

Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate from 1850 to 1892, wrote a poem in 1854 about the Charge of the Light Brigade, sent by a garbled order against the Russian guns in the Crimea. He praises the soldiers' courage, but also writes that someone made a mistake:

Someone had blundered.

Wales wrote this role into the mission of its National Poet, created in 2005: to write works that “celebrate our successes, comment on our failures”.

And when the country is struck, it is also to the poet that people turn. A year after 9/11, Billy Collins read before Congress a poem written for the victims, “The Names”. In Wales, Gillian Clarke wrote “Six Bells” for the anniversary of a mining disaster that claimed the lives of forty-four miners¹. (Poems on the Underground, “Six Bells”.)

The title has also multiplied on a smaller scale: most American states have their own laureate, as do many cities. Louisiana appoints two, one for English and one for French, such as the Cajun singer and poet Kristi Guillory. The Navajo Nation has its own: Jake Skeets, a Diné poet.

In Everyday Life

For Juan Felipe Herrera, US laureate from 2015, the job is above all about passing things on: he spent a year with teachers from thirty-five Chicago public schools, reaching some 5,000 students. Ada Limón had poems installed on picnic tables in national parks. Arthur Sze, reappointed in 2026, has made translation the heart of his tenure. In Scotland, the Makar must encourage the reading and writing of poetry, especially among young people.

Nothing but Words

Poetry is not at the center of power, but at its edges. Once again, the poet stands between two worlds: power and citizens. With an official post and work to hand in, the poet steps down from a wondrous pedestal and moves away from the Muses: now in everyday life, feet on the ground, close to fellow citizens. The job description is no longer to sing the king's praises, but to teach others, and above all students, to use words, to question power, to show disasters, to challenge power's self-congratulation, and, when the day comes, to know how to say no.

Sources:

¹ The Process of Poetry, Rosanna McGlone

Poems on the Underground, “Six Bells”

John F. Kennedy, remarks at Amherst College (October 26, 1963): https://www.arts.gov/about/kennedy-transcript