Queen's Poet Savages Politicians in First Poem

Britain's poet laureates have been criticized for writing about humdrum events on the royal calendar. If her first effort is any indication, the new laureate—the first woman—has no such intentions. Carol Ann Duffy is ticked off about the nation's scandal over lawmakers' expense accounts, and she lets everyone know it in her first poem, reports the Guardian. Politics "makes of your heart a fist," writes Duffy, who says of the poem only that it's about lost idealism.

"How it takes the breath away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin, makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static, of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this—politics—to your education education education; shouts this—Politics!—to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS." (More Carol Ann Duffy stories.)