Laureate

It's been announced that Simon Armitage is to be the new poet laureate in the UK. I've not really read much of his poetry, however I did read a book of his where he was walking part of the South West Coast path, and conducting poetry readings along the way.
He came across as fairly (for want of a better word) "normal" person for a poet. But then I guess when we, or I, think of poets we think of Byron & Keats, people who seemed somewhat self-destructive, and mired in that Romantic era.
Or perhaps Dylan Thomas, drinker and chaser of women, and again somewhat self-destructive. People who lived, and died, for their art. Passionate and unable to deal with their passions.
Somehow, this is how we expect poets to be. Penniless and living on credit, drinking away their demons, and dying in dark corners, unknown and obscure.
But all that is outdated, and a mythical stereotype. There are plenty of people who are good poets without having to live a wild life, or die a short one.
Armitage himself used to be a probation officer, and although he gave up a steady job to become a poet full time, it is a very ordinary sounding starting point, and in some ways shows there is a chance for all of us who have that creative urge, that if we practice and have patience, work hard and take a chance, then we can become recognised.
It also makes me think that I should be reading much more modern poetry (even if I rarely understand it), and at least try to soak up the rhythms and the essences that are entwined within it.
Anyway, here's a poem to celebrate the new laureate:

Ten years for a poet
Without early release
No chance of probation
When rhyming for Royals
In sentence coils

Those sherry bottles
To be drunk with disorderly words
In infinitives split
Over world events
Trying to make sense

Our leader in verses
Versus fake news
Storyteller of truth
In a post-truth age
Taking the stage