SPECULATION ON CHOICE OF NEW POET LAUREATE

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7200, 24 April 1930, Page 7

SPECULATION ON CHOICE OF NEW POET LAUREATE

Kipling "Popular” Pick BATH RAILWAY POET DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE WHY FILL POST AT ALL? United Press Association. —By Eloctri# Telegraph.—Copyright. LONDON, April 22. There i 3 some speculation about Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s choice of a now Poet Laureate. The names of Sir William Watson, Eudyard Kipling, John Drinkwater, Alfred Noyes and John Masefield havo te-cu mentioned. Out of those, Kipling would have tho heartiest support of millions who dp not read poetry as a habit but love his vigorous ballads. John Drink water’s youth may be against him.' John Masefield is the most talented next to Kipling, but critics hold that liis work lacks dignity. Alfred Noyes has practically all the qualifications, except a.ge.

The Daily Express hopes that the post will remain vacant. “Why saddle i.he country with the laughing stock of a public poet, as though poetry were a form of activity to be supervised, guided, and turned on and turned off by tho Lord Chamberlain?” In certain quarters tho claims of tho Bath railway porter, Henry Chappell, author of tho remarkable war time poem “'The Day,” aro .seriously advanced “in view of tho present democratic times.”