Royal Pain: Poet Laureate's Fixation on Japanese Movie Monsters

LONDON.  The position of poet laureate is considered a minor office here as the importance of the British monarchy has faded over time, but members of the Royal Family are nonetheless anxious whenever Andrew Motion, the incumbent laureate, announces that he has finished a poem.

Mothra vs. Godzilla

"Motion has become increasingly political over the past few years," says Times Literary Supplement editor Philip Wathan, "beginning with 'Regime Change', a poem he wrote in 2003 about England's role in the invasion of Iraq.  He was, in essence, living off the government at the same time he was criticizing it."

Andrew Motion:  "Here I sit and think and ponder, my next poem 'bout a movie monster."

Motion's state poems are supposed to celebrate the monarchy upon momentous events such as the marriage of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.   On that occasion he composed "Spring Wedding", a poem whose opening lines struck a satirical tone that has come to dominate his verse:

I took the news outdoors 

    that you had married Parker Bowles

I couldn't imagine why until it struck me--

    she's built like one of your bloody horses.

"Charles, why is the poet laureate staring at me?"

Last year Motion cloaked his distaste for the monarchy in a new symbolic fabric, adopting the Japanese movie monster "Mothra"--a giant moth--to lampoon Queen Elizabeth in a rondeau entitled "Queen Mothra".   Some critics said it was his metaphorical way of saying the monarchy should become extinct, like dinosaurs.

Mothra in flight

Those close to Motion say he is upset that his salary is small by comparison to Prince Charles' polo expenditures, which generally consume over a quarter of the Royal Family's annual 36.7 million pound budget.  "Motion should take a deep breath and exhale," said Royal Stablemaster Andrew Cluny.  "Polo pony feed costs a lot more than foolscap," the official writing paper of the Department of Royal Poetry, Motion's nominal employer.

Godzilla

Motion's animus towards Prince Charles is frequently directed against Camilla Parker Bowles, who will become his consort once Charles ascends to the throne.  In a brief couplet that he dashed off in response to Charles' request for a toast to Camilla on her birthday, Motion used simile to express his feelings:

Here's a birthday wish to my darling Camilla

You slay me, babe, like a British Godzilla.

Motion is said to have been a great admirer of Lady Diana Spencer, Charles' first wife, and remains bitter at what he considers the shabby treatment she received at the hands of the future king.  In his mournful "Lady Di--Like Rodan", Motion drew a parallel between the doomed blond princess and Rodan, a flying dinousaur whose biggest box-office success was "Rodan vs. Godzilla".

Rodan

Rodan, part bird part dinosaur

You soar high in the sky

like Lady Di

only to crash down

to the ground

and die.