So this is Migratory's Theory of Shakespeare Appreciation:

Teenager - Shakespeare's boring.
Adult - Shakespeare's obviously great. I don't actually read any, but everyone knows he's the best.
First year English undergrad - Hey, when you actually read him Shakespeare's pretty darn good.
Final year English undergrad - Although having said that, his contemporaries are somewhat unfairly overshadowed.
Masters student - I'm done with Shakespeare. I'm studying a writer you've never even heard of.
Lecturer - Shakespeare's boring.

There's no official word, but the Times has announced that Carol Ann Duffy will be the next poet laureate.

The One Show listed a few possibilities, bizarrely including Benjamin Zephaniah. He's extremely awesome, but who'd possibly think he'd accept the laureateship? The BBC also gave their five front runners here. If pressed I'd have swung towards Armitage, because I've seen him read and really, really enjoyed it, but no complaints here for the choice of Duffy.

Wendy Cope has a decent argument against the post here. Personally I don't think it should be abolished, but most of my favourites didn't get the laureateship. It has produced some wonderful work - Charge of the Light Brigade being chief - but there's been a greater quantity of awesomeness coming from people writing without official status or the need to be diplomatic. That it makes people notice poetry a little more is justification for the role, but it's not an automatic label of 'best' poet.

I don't think Motion's been a particularly visible laureate. Maybe if you read the right broadsheets you get exposed to him, but he's not been a voice that I've been aware of. A change will be nice.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Update: The Times was right.

Someone came up to me in Tesco's yesterday to ask me where I got my new coat :-) Said she'd noticed it before but been too shy to ask.
Clearly I'm now a fashion icon.

Anyway... we had to read The Emperor's Babe, by Bernadine Evaristo, for Contemporary Literature this week (I also had to do a presentation on it, so anyone who needs to know about nomadic feminism in this book need look no further than me). It's a rather good book written in very accessible free verse (there's an extract here) and set in Roman London. Zuleika is the main character, who is married to a much older man at age eleven, and the book charts her rebellion over the years against attempts to trap her.

It's also a major part of the book that she's a black woman, which is why one of these covers makes me go WTF?

( Guess which one )

Staying up till the early hours on the computer is pretty bad.
Staying up till the early hours because I was reading my NaNoWriMo novel is a whole other level of badness.
I'm pretty pleased with it, though, for a rush job. I know I say this every year, but I am tempted to finish it this time. My zombie hero is ready to avenge his own death and it seems a little churlish to leave him standing in the banquet hall with his sword drawn.

Oh, and I ventured into the Bodleian Library today. I managed not to raze it to the ground, but I didn't actually touch a book. So I guess I get 50% for effort.

I'm currently reading Halting State. Frankly, a near future book about an apparently impossible robbery in a World of Warcraft-esq game, and the real-world financial and legal fall-out, sounded geekily awesome. There are a few teensy problems, though. Mostly significantly...

( Cut for naughty words )