He was a vain pot-head poet who wore those Buddy Holly glasses before they were de rigueur cool plus a Doors t-shirt and a tweed blazer.
The Folio prize will go to the book the judges – headed by poet Lavinia Greenlaw – determine best fulfils its criterion of excellence.
"For such a small population we have more talent per head of poets, painters and performers than anywhere else in Europe.
Indeed, both Italian (Marinetti) and Russian (Mayakovsky) Futurism were headed by poets.
Like a successful businessman heads to the store and a successful doctor heads to the office each day, the successful poet heads to the poem.
(The state could have accepted the gay part, and the adultery part, if only McGreevey had not decided to prove his love by making the poet head of homeland security).
He was usually said to have three heads, though the poet Hesiod (flourished 7th century bce) said he had 50.
The heads are the poet's impassive perception that we cannot excise from the argument the human body, even in the name of justice.
Gallagher treads difficult personal and historical ground in, for instance, "The Women of Auschwitz", whose "shorn heads" haunt the poet as her own hair is cut off - "Preempting the inevitable" - before chemotherapy.
The Writer's Union also formed a committee in April 1968, headed by the poet Jaroslav Seifert, to investigate the persecution of writers after the Communist takeover in February 1948 and rehabilitate the literary figures into the Union, bookstores and libraries, and the literary world.
In this poem, "I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain," mourners tread inside the poet's head, a service beats like a drum until her mind goes numb, a casket is lifted as her soul creaks, and the leaden boots escorting the box make space itself begin to toll.
