Where have all the poets gone?

This week, Carol Anne Duffy won the PEN/Pinter prize for poetry.  Duffy, as Poet Laureate, is probably the most famous poet operating in Britain at the moment (Seamus Heaney having of course moved to Ireland), and has an ever-increasing body of critically acclaimed poetry.  But how many people could name a single one of her poems?

This obviously isn’t limited to Duffy.  Last week we discussed the anonymity of London’s Poetry Parnassus, and indeed of Literature in general.  However, while novels are less discussed than footballers, they are still almost infinitely more successful than poems.  JK Rowling will sell millions of copies of The Casual Vacancy this autumn; Duffy, awards and all, will struggle to shift a fraction of that.