The perks of being Poet Laureate...

CAROL ANN DUFFY may have broken with custom by becoming Britain's first female Poet Laureate today.

 POPULAR AND PROFOUND Britain s first female Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy 'POPULAR AND PROFOUND': Britain's first female Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy

But she's keen to revive an age-old perk of the job called “butt of sack", traditionally a type of wine, which nowadays translates into around 600 bottles of sherry.

The 53-year-old Rapture poet took over from Andrew Motion today, who has been Poet Laureate since 1999.

She joked: “Andrew hasn’t had his (butt of sack) yet so I’ve asked for mine up front.”

Duffy becomes the latest in a line of poets to be officially appointed by the Queen for the £5,000-a-year job and follows in the footsteps of John Dryden, William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

She is the first woman to be given the job in its 341-year history.

Duffy arrives at the John Rylands Library in Manchester for today s announcement Duffy arrives at the John Rylands Library in Manchester for today's announcement

The announcement marks a turnaround for the writer, who once said in an interview that no self-respecting poet should be made to write poems for the royal family.

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Today Duffy said she was "honoured and humbled" to accept the position, explaining she had thought “long and hard” before taking the job.

She said: “I look on it as a recognition of the great woman poets we have writing now.

“I’ve decided to accept it for that reason.”

She added: "Poetry is all around us, all of the time, whether in song or in speech or on the page, and we turn to it when events, personal or public, matter most. In accepting this Laureateship, I hope to contribute to people’s understanding of what poetry can do, and where it can be found.”

The laureate is officially appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Government and until Tony Blair established a 10-year tenure in 1999, it was a job for life.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today: "Carol Ann is a truly brilliant modern poet who has stretched our imaginations by putting the whole range of human experiences into lines that capture the emotions perfectly and I wish her well for her ten year term.”

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said Duffy had achieved something that only "the true greats of literature" can - to be regarded as both "popular and profound".

He added: "It’s a measure of her reach and impact on our national life that her poems can be the subject of serious academic study and, at the same time, be just as at home when families gather for the landmark events of their lives."

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The role includes writing poems to commemorate major state occasions and events involving the Royal Family - a task which Motion said he found extremely difficult.

His rap-style poem for Prince William’s 21st birthday is unlikely to feature in any future anthologies of English verse, but Motion said he was pleased with works he produced for the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday and the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Earlier this week Motion said he was “relieved” to be leaving the job.

Glasgow-born Duffy was such a favourite throughout the six-month selection process that bookies stopped taking bets.

She was in the running for the job ten-years-ago but missed out amid rumours the then Prime Minister Tony Blair was worried how “Middle England” would react to a lesbian laureate.

But Duffy is one of the most widely-read living British poets across all generations - thanks in part to her popularity on A-level and GCSE syllabuses.

As well as numerous collections of verse she has also written a number of plays, and is now creative director at Manchester Metropolitan University’s writing school.

Her 2005 book Rapture, a collection of short, passionate poems chronicling a love affair from start to end, won Duffy the T.S. Eliot and Forward prizes for verse.

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She has been quoted as saying her approach to poetry is about “using simple words in a complicated way”.

Duffy’s verse was at the centre of controversy last summer when an exam board removed one of her poems, Education for Leisure, from its GCSE anthology after complaints it glorified knife crime.

The poem, which opens with the line “Today I am going to kill something. Anything”, describes the thoughts and actions of someone who feels powerless and decides to “play God”.

Duffy responded to the poem’s removal by writing a run-down of violent deaths in Shakespeare for a national newspaper.

She plans to donate her yearly sum of money for the new post to the Poetry Society to fund a prize for the best poetry collection of the year.

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