In the light of that holding the job has interfered with his own writing, and Wendy Cope's suggestion that , many people are asking today what a Poet Laureate is for. The post doesn't pay well (£5,000 a year), nor does it seem to provide much inspiration for a modern poet; expecting a contemporary poet to write something for the Queen's birthday seems as anachronistic as demanding that they all write devotional verse.
There is, however, no contractual requirement for the poet to produce work about the Royal Family, and produced for Prince William's 21st birthday must stand as a chilling example of how celebratory poetry can go badly wrong. Whatever was the case in the 17th century, artists today need to be working outside the political establishment; if their work is to mean anything they need to have the freedom to respond to events with subtlety, and to challenge received ideas.
Can you identify these poets, filmed by the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ back in 1995?
that Carol Ann Duffy wasn't made Poet Laureate back in 1999 because of her "alternative lifestyle": essentially that Downing Street felt that people wouldn't accept a homosexual appointee. This is just the sort of skewed reasoning that makes the Poet Laureateship seem so archaic. I was also horrified when back in September the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance removed Carol Ann Duffy's poem Education for Leisure from a GCSE anthology. It was a cowardly decision, taken in response to three complaints that the poem encouraged violence, when it clearly did the opposite. Instead of taking the chance to engage with students' experience of a violent society the issue was hidden. That seemed beside the point - it needed to tell young people what to think.
The consensus seems to be that Motion did an excellent job as an advocate for poetry, and I would feel sorry to see any reduction in the visibility of poetry in the UK, but this is a chance to do something more daring. Why don't we appoint somebody who is an excellent poet and just let them write what they want? The media love a hook, so their work will get more attention, but they won't have to wait to feel inspired by the Duke of Edinburgh.
Since November we've been asking the people we interview for the show if there is something they'd like to recommend. The latest is Nick McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand, who talks about a new film, Legacy in the Dust: The Four Aces Story, but people have mentioned all sorts of things. One work that keeps cropping up, however, is , a film that didn't get a single nomination for the Oscars or Golden Globes. Three people have recommended it as a must-see: Siobhan Redmond, David Holmes and Ari Folman, and I have to say I agree with them. You can see the full list of recommendations here.
Is there something you would recommend yourself; something that you're reading at the moment or an artwork that you particularly love? We'd be interested to know.
The news that has won the Costa Book of the Year Award comes as no surprise. Missing out on the Mann Booker Prize despite being the favourite to win, it always looked likely that The Secret Scripture would take the Costa Prize. I have mixed feeling about Barry's win. He is a writer with a very distinctive voice who produces beautiful, incisive prose. If the term poetic prose didn't immediately make one think of rambling tosh this would be a good way to describe the author's combination of unusual imagery and emotional immediacy. He also engages with aspects of Ireland's past that are new to many, and has woven the stories of recurring characters together through a number of different novels and plays.
Paperback edition of The Secret Scripture, published by Faber & Faber
While this impulse to connect things up adds a richness to some of the works, in the case of The Secret Scripture, however, it leads to a twist that to me felt laboured and unconvincing. It seems that this was also the feeling of some on the Costa judging panel. According to the , "The feeling of many of the judges with The Secret Scripture was that there was a lot wrong with it and it was flawed in many ways". The judges are to be applauded for their honesty, but I can't help but wonder whether there is another book of the year. I hesitate to suggest a title, not being sure if anything contemporary I've read this year would deserve such a plaudit, but I'd be interested to know if you have any thoughts.
This week's show comes from the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow. We filmed performances by exciting folk stars Drever, McCusker and Woomble as well as all-male French vocal group Lo Cor de la Plana. We'll have an item about Robert Burns, one on Franz Ferdinand's new album, but the show is not exclusively Scottish, including an item on Rupert Goold's King Lear and an interview with Bruce Springsteen (Friday only).
Do you enjoy our visits to events like the Edinburgh Festival and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition or do you prefer the shows from the studio? Let us know what you think.
While you're waiting for our programme you might enjoy some of the videos on the Celtic Connections website. Standout performances include Abigail Washburn and The Sparrow Quartet, featuring the amazing banjo player Bela Fleck who performed at President Obama's inauguration. There are also lots of performances from a concert showcasing the songs of Robert Burns, which features Eddi Reader, Michael Marra and Dick Gaughin.
Another day, : this time for Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk. Last week I interviewed director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black about their film and asked them how it had been received. We had been talking about the contemporary situation for gay rights in the US and I was interested in what the reaction had been from the gay community and whether there had been any backlash from opposing groups. Both Van Sant and Black took my question as being about critical reaction to the film and they talked animatedly about . They even made the point that one major newspaper had published a negative (or lukewarm) review of the film but had then re-reviewed it.
I don't think they will have exactly the same reaction from the . I was struck by just how conventional, and at times contrived and sentimental, Milk is. Van Sant is a highly skilled director, but he seems to make two distinct sorts of films: art house projects like Elephant and Last Days, and mainstream movies like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. In Elephant and Last Days Gus Van Sant seemed to consider how the media produces a version of particular events, respectively the Columbine shootings and Kurt Cobain's death. These films combined visual panache with a disregard for conventional narrative. The story of Milk is gripping, but as Mark Kermode said on the show, it's as if Van Sant thought, "The story is so extraordinary that I'm going to make a very, very ordinary film of it." Coming from a director who has engaged intelligently with questions of how events are represented, Milk feels like an enjoyable and well made, but uninspiring film. What are your thoughts?
It seems that we have inspired the musical union of Bishi and Cameron Carpenter, who are performing together at St Leonard's Church in Shoreditch. DJ and musician Bishi has been on the show twice, and spotted Carpenter's performance on The Culture Show back in November. Bishi wasn't the only one - after the show four of my friends independently asked who the crazy organist was.
Cameron Carpenter at the Kimmel Center Festival
combines profound musicianship with a flamboyant style that is about as far away from the traditional image of an organist as possible, and since his appearance on the show has been nominated for a Grammy Award. We'll be showing an item about Carpenter on The Culture Show Uncut on Friday 6 February.
Back to this weekend. During the concert the pair will be playing tracks from Bishi's new album, Albion, but also pieces by Chopin and songs from Disney films: quite a mix. Let us know if you go to the concert - I'd be there, but I'm out of London this weekend.
We've had a couple of comments recently from viewers who feel that we should broaden out the range of people who present our items. In our discussion of the Motown Special, one of garryco's complaints about the choice of Martin Freeman was that he hadn't been around at the time the original records were coming out. We also received an email from Kevin asking "Was it not possible for a documentary about a legendary black music label to have been presented by a black actor/personality?" Interesting thoughts.
We chose Martin Freeman because of his passion for Motown and his engaging (we thought) presenting style, but it would be interesting to hear who you would have liked to have seen on the programme instead. We do screen test people, in fact during the current series you'll spot a couple of new faces.
So who do you think would make a brilliant presenter for the show? Take as an example the show going out on 3 February, which features items on Alfred Brendel, HBO and Cameron Carpenter. Who would be your dream team for that show?
Roberto Saviano, the Italian journalist and author of a gripping expose of the Camorra (what the English translation of the book subtitles "Italy's other Mafia") gives a remarkable interview on The Culture Show tonight.
Roberto Saviano with Lawrence Pollard
has sold phenomenally well around the world and alerted people to a branch of Italian organised crime that many were oblivious to. Saviano maps the startling involvement of the Camorra in legitimate businesses, in an empire that extends as close to home as Scotland. In this the book and the film are very different - Saviano is at the centre of the book Gomorrah, talking to heroin addicts, looking through a gangster's holiday snaps (the home of General Kalashnikov is the destination) and reacting to the way that the Camorra dominate the society in which he lives. The film is primarily a visual experience: grimly beautiful but exhausting rather than moving or informative. I missed the wider context, even if while reading the book I sometimes found myself taken aback by Saviano's emotional style. Having learned subsequently that he has to live under armed guard and spends a lot of his time on the move I suppose that he can't be criticised for painting the Camorra in vivid colours. What he has accomplished is remarkable. I've written more about the film here.
So I would personally recommend the book over the film, although if you missed it in the cinema you will have to wait until 9 February for the DVD release. If you watch this week's Culture Show you'll find that Mark Kermode thinks it a travesty that Gomorrah was left off the list, but I still think that the Academy . Are you with me or with Mark? Perhaps one for the Kermodes?
Let us know what you think of the interview.
In our Uncut show this Friday we've got two new songs from the remarkable Antony Hegarty and three of the Johnsons (Julia, Max and Rob). They perform Epilepsy is Dancing and Another World, from the album The Crying Light. I saw onstage at LSO St Luke's when they recorded a session for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Four back in 2005 and they were electrifying live.
Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons performs with the Oregon Symphony at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Have you seen them on stage? If so then let us know what you thought of them live. If not, there are coming up in May and June, or just enjoy them performing live in the Culture Show studio on Friday.
We're feeling quite flattered this morning because the Royal Mail have revealed that in drawing up their new series of they were partly inspired by the Culture Show's Design Quest. In an interview with , Julietta Edgar of the Royal Mail described how they had taken the 50th anniversary of the Mini as a starting point but wanted to broaden the series out, "We also looked at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ culture programme on design classics to see what was making their top ten and top 20. We wanted to make sure that we got a mixture of different types of design so that we had different representations of where the British had made an impact."
It's interesting what they have kept in and left out from our full list. The London Underground map makes the grade, as does the Spitfire and, of course, the Mini. What's missing are the less photogenic or more controversial items - the Catseye, Tomb Raider and that source of moral outrage Grand Theft Auto, all of which made our final top 10.
The other memorable vote we've run in the past was for Britain's greatest Living Icons. Do you think we should approach the Royal Mail about making them into a series or should we think about doing something altogether different? What series of cultural stamps would you like to have available for your letters?
Although I'm delighted at the , there are another couple of winners that I'm even more pleased about. Waltz With Bashir, the winner of Best Foreign Language film, is a startlingly original meditation on war and memory - particularly poignant with things as they are in the Middle East at present. About as different a film as you could imagine, Happy-Go-Lucky is the story of sunny schoolteacher Poppy: a character who starts the film as gratingly optimistic but inexorably wins you over with her warmth and intelligence.
Sally Hawkins won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, and it was richly deserved for a subtle performance that makes the film into a delight. Happy-Go-Lucky isn't without its serious moments, but the upbeat tone left many surprised, and some . I think it's a marvellous film, and it is unusual in its subject matter - not just because it is by Mike Leigh, who is better known for dark material. There are few enough films made about people who are straightforwardly decent, without being heroes or campaigners. Poppy is simply a good (but not perfect) person, and it is a delight to spend a couple of hours with her.
On Tuesday the director of Slumdog Millionaire talks to The Culture Show about his new film, set in Mumbai. As part of the feature Danny Boyle appears in front of an invited audience to answer their questions about the film. Their reactions are very interesting. If you'd like to see some extra footage from Danny and Mark's chat in the pub before the film you can watch it here.
Danny Boyle has shown his ability to hop from genre to genre, making films including Trainspotting and 28 Days Later... I haven't seen Slumdog yet, but from the enthusiastic reviews I'm hearing around the office it appears that Boyle has managed what he achieves in his best films - making something that is both entertaining and moving but also artistically interesting. That doesn't mean, however, that I forgive him for A Life Less Ordinary. Please God, may I never have to watch Ewan McGregor in another musical.
What do you think of Danny Boyle's films and how would you say he compares to other British directors?
This year is the of Motown and ahead of this week's Culture Show special on the record label we wondered which tracks you remember most fondly. I would have to go with by the Four Tops - sweet without being saccharine, a song that really conveys the exuberance of being in love. What would be at the top of your list?
Find out more about our special, Martin Freeman Goes to Motown, here.
Martin Freeman outside Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit
In case you've missed it, Radio 2 is currently running a massive Motown season.
