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The inaugural Australian poet laureate will be appointed in 2025 as part of the federal Labor government鈥檚 new National Cultural Policy,聽.

The intention to create the official position was announced, with some fanfare, at the beginning of 2023. But there is still no clear indication of how a suitable candidate will be selected, what criteria will be used, and the precise nature of the role. We still do not know what, exactly, an Australian poet laureate will be expected to do, or to achieve.

When the position was announced, academic Valentina Gosetti called it a 鈥溾�� and hoped it would 鈥渞eflect the call for diversity鈥� embodied in Revive. One can only welcome any public initiative that acknowledges the greater diversity of contemporary Australian poetry, where Indigenous, non-Anglo, queer and all-abilities people are now represented.

But what about the diversity of poetry itself? I mean those genres that call themselves poetry, or might be deemed 鈥減oetry-adjacent鈥� but pass under the radar of institutions such as the academy, the publishing industry and the literary awards system.

How would a poet laureate 鈥渟peak鈥� to the spoken word, slam or hip-hop communities, or to bush poets, or to songwriters?

The dominant intellectual model for poetry in the West remains the romantic-modernist version that emphasises its wow factor: its capacity to transform or estrange language in exciting, aesthetically challenging ways, often at the level of the individual image.

As Sarah Holland-Batt expresses it in her study of Australian poets,聽聽(2021): 鈥淧oems are full of surprises: each line is a little detonation of language and imagery, each stanza a series of swift steps into the unknown.鈥�

This model has been progressively institutionalised through academic literary studies and, more recently, university creative writing programs. Holland-Batt is herself an award-winning poet and professor of creative writing at Queensland University of Technology. She has advocated for an Australian poet laureate, saying the role would 鈥渆levate the status of Australian poetry domestically and internationally鈥�.

But not all poetry is about aesthetic surprise. A century and more ago,聽, it often told stories, inveigled emotional empathy, or offered moral dicta in ways that now seem trite or sentimental.

Poems like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow鈥檚聽, Thomas Bracken鈥檚聽聽and Ella Wheeler Wilcox鈥檚聽聽once made up what a great many people understood by 鈥減oetry鈥�. With the work of the popular but increasingly unfashionable聽聽in mind, George Orwell called such offerings 鈥済ood bad poetry鈥�:

A good bad poem is a graceful monument to the obvious. It records in memorable form [鈥�] some emotion which very nearly every human being can share.

This is what a great many song lyrics continue to do, of course, along with other kinds of contemporary verse-making that fall short of the literary institution. This is why, once in a while, a journalist will announce that poetry isn鈥檛 dead by 鈥渄iscovering鈥� spoken word or slam poetry, though they have been around for decades.

Today鈥檚 spoken word poets are overwhelmingly young; many have links to popular music, hip-hop, stand-up comedy and theatre. The聽, for example, has evolved its own spirited and diverse community, its own local celebrities. It offers its own poetry workshops, in which poets can refine their craft as performers, and is part of an alternative awards system.

The emphasis is on being 鈥渁uthentic鈥�, for slam poetry draws from the language of identity politics and personal development. The strong emotional engagement that performers invite from their audience makes it much more exciting than the average page-based poetry reading.

Consider Nielsen BookData figures for the top-ten bestselling titles under the category 鈥淧oetry Texts & Poetry Anthologies鈥� for the period 2019鈥�23.

These figures highlight the importance of the internet in generating an audience for poetry. Five of the top ten bestselling books are by Instagram poets, an astonishing four of them by Punjabi-Canadian聽, and one by Australian聽. 鈥淚nstapoetry鈥� speaks in many of the same ways slam does, in the language of self-help and positive affirmation.

Singer-songwriters are also represented, with聽, and聽聽of Lana Del Rey鈥檚 recent spoken-word album.

Notable, too, is the success of First Nations poet Evelyn Araluen鈥檚聽聽debut collection聽, which currently makes her the bestselling Australian poet. Indeed, she and Homer are the only two 鈥渓iterary鈥� authors in this list. Homer is there almost certainly because the Penguin translation is commonly set on university courses.

In tenth place comes聽, by the US-based Australian actor Ben Lawson, a bush ballad in response to the Black Summer bushfires, illustrated by Bruce Whatley.

Araluen has been mentioned in the media as a potential candidate for the Australian laureateship, along with more established poets like Judith Beveridge, Ali Cobby Eckermann, John Kinsella and David Malouf.

How might Indigenous poets like Araluen or Eckermann feel about a position intended to amplify the literary achievements of the colonial state? After all, the initial role of the British laureate was as an ornament to power. Though it is no longer expected, laureates up to and including the present incumbent,聽, still write forgettable panegyrics on royal occasions.

When the planned laureateship was announced,聽聽that 鈥渨e鈥檝e already got the words that move us collectively as a nation鈥�: those of classic popular songs. Would those who advocate for an Australian poet laureate entertain one whose words are already carried on the voices of multitudes, such as Nick Cave, Paul Kelly, Sia, Courtney Barnett or The Kid Laroi?

It is unclear how a poet laureate appointed on the basis of their standing within the literary community might 鈥渆levate the status鈥� of poetry that is already popular and which survives quite happily outside it. Will the appointee merely campaign for more readings, or for the posting of poems in public spaces or on social media? These are old ideas.

Might they advocate, as British poet laureate聽聽did, for a poetry centre at a university somewhere 鈥� perhaps the same one that employs them? Or would they be more usefully involved in bringing about a national discussion about the many different ways in which poetry is now practised and understood, and develop better channels of communication between them?

Peter Kirkpatrick is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney. He has published widely in Australian literary studies and cultural history, and is the author of three collections of poetry, including聽The Hard Word聽(2021). This story was first published on .

Hero photo:聽Nick Cave performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, July 2 2022.聽Laurent Gillieron/AAP.