The post, which is a lifetime position and chosen by the prime minister with the queen's affirmation, became vacant with the death of Ted Hughes last November. The matter of who'll take over Hughes' duties has received a degree of media play that would astonish readers in America, where the annual announcement of the U.S. poet laureate barely rates an item in major newspapers -- even during National Poetry Month. (FYI: It's Robert Pinsky, for the third time in as many years.) In England, however, the candidates' poems are printed -- and their chances debated -- in the national news sections of the broadsheets. The press is also discussing the advisability of changing the term to five or 10 years, upping the salary and even adding a proper job description to what has thus far been a lifelong sinecure as a member of the royal household. The identity of the next laureate is such a big deal that even bookmaker William Hill, who runs a nationwide chain of betting parlors, is getting in on the act by posting odds.

Part of the hype and anticipation around the laureate is a result of poetry's new hipness in British society. There are poets-in-residence for Marks & Spencer (a British department store chain), Parliament and the London Zoo -- and now, a producer of "Elizabeth" is making "Ted and Sylvia." Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, the film will be based on the tragic relationship between Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and is being tentatively billed as "the greatest love story of the century." Indeed.

Andrew Motion, Carol Anne Duffy, Tony Harrison, Wendy Cope and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott (who doesn't even live in Great Britain) have all been named in the media and through the poetry grapevine as possible successors to Hughes, but an official list of finalists has not been disclosed. The delay has encouraged the poets and the press to play out the battle in public. Walcott threw his hat into the ring in the Observer, and Motion's elegiac ode to Hughes in the Times was widely seen as an application for the post. Meanwhile, Tony Harrison roundly declined the job -- in verse -- in the Guardian, and sent a copy of his poem to Blair and the queen. Titled "Laureate's Block, for Queen Elizabeth, " it begins:

I'm appalled to see newspapers use my name
as "widely tipped" for a job I'd never seek ...
I'd sooner be a free man ... free not to have to puff some prince's wedding,
free to say up yours to Tony Blair,
to write an ode on Charles I's beheading
and regret the restoration of his heir.

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