Alas poor laureate - Andrew Motion's public pronouncements seem to provoke mirth rather than the awed respect that his title should command.
At the weekend he was urging headteachers to introduce more diversity into the poetry read in schools. But when he said teachers should look beyond the popular Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage his words were headlined in a Sunday newspaper as "Poet laureat - schools are too keen on my rivals".
To be fair to Mr Motion, he was singing the praises of two West Indian born poets, James Berry and John Agard, rather than his own. (Most English teachers, one suspects, would say his verse is all very well for Her Majesty but hardly good enough for children.)
"I know teachers are overworked but there really should be more diversity and a greater range of forms of writing," said the laureate who added that Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye had been listed novels on the curriculum for far too long.
But few are inclined to be fair to a man who, when asked what children should be reading in school, recommended the Odyssey, Paradise Lost, Don Quixote and Ullysses - prompting shame-faced parents and teachers who have yet to finish (OK, yet to start) them to wonder which Olympian summit the poet laureate inhabits.
