Ms Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy has pulled off a three-in-one achievement by becoming Britain’s newest poet laureate: she is the first woman, the first Scot and the first openly gay person to hold that distinction. In the year that America elected a black president, this is most fitting. I’m rooting for the amazing Adam Lambert to win American Idol, which will make him the first gay winner of that show—and what a landmark year it’ll be.

Anyway, to celebrate all this, let me share with you a poem by Duffy that I rather like:

Mrs Darwin
by Carol Ann Duffy

7 April 1852

Went to the Zoo
I said to him — Something about that chimpanzee over there
reminds me of you

*

Speaking of simian beasts, did you know that Shamita Shetty’s room was ransacked by baboons in South Africa recently? Even baboons, it would seem, have evolved to the point that they’re besotted by celebrity.

(Shamita link via email from Nishit.)