Offa With His Head

The Lyre is delighted to learn from the Bromsgrove Standard that British poet Geoffrey Hill has been made a 'Knight to remember' in the New Year Honours list.

Earlier in the holiday period, the seventy-nine-year-old Oxford Professor of Poetry gave an interview from home to BBC Newsnight, in which he emphasised his fun-for-all-the-family qualities. Dressing up as Raymond Briggs' Father Christmas for the occasion, Hill asseverated his admiration for the Liverpudlian comedian, Ken Dodd.

This set The Lyre wondering what quips Sir Geoffrey might have scribbled on his cuffs when he kneels to be dubbed sò by the Queen. His later poetry, after all, is notable for its light-hearted cracks at the reigning British monarch and her family. Here are a few:

 
I cannot say how
much is still owing
to the merchant house
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

('To the High Court of Parliament', Canaan (1996))

                         Comedienne to act
SORRY for hostile nation

(On the Queen's response to the death of Diana, Speech! Speech! (2000), 114)

                                             when circling 
Heathrow on hold we are entertained
by Windsor's scaled-down perfect replicas

(On 'our chequered country' and / or Legoland UK, The Orchards of Syon (2002), LXXI)

Say, thirty years until H.M. commands
a small obstruction for the mantelpiece

(On the poet's 70th birthday, Scenes from Comus (2005), 1.4)

Getting into the act I ordain a dishonoured
and discredited nation.
                                  [...] It smacks rather 
of moral presumption. Things are not that bad. 
H. Mirren's super. 

('On Reading Milton and the English Revolution', A Treatise of Civil Power (2007))

The Lyre admits to an uneasy feeling that this is not altogether fool. As one seasoned Hill-watcher commented on this flourish of the poet's tickling stick:

You have to read between the lines [...] The reference is to The Queen -- last year's film about the death of Diana -- but also to the Queen. When Hill abbreviates Helen Mirren to "H Mirren", he means to imply "H[er] M[ajesty]". The British monarchy is an Oscar-winning distraction. It is to be hoped that there is a good close reader on the staff of Buckingham Palace, before someone accidentally offers Hill the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.