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Thu 08 Aug 2010Why shouldn't poets do the State some service?
When Taoiseach Brian Cowen called for poets to celebrate Ireland as a brand to get the country ‘back on track’, the idea was seen as philistine – but is such a request so unreasonable?
IN A SPEECH at the end of June to announce the appointment of Harry Clifton as Ireland Professor of Poetry, the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, offered some observations of a poet’s role in society. He suggested that the poet might embrace the uncomfortable and the unacceptable. A poet, or a writer, “can say what others fear to say” and can “confront what others would rather avoid”.
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