Poetry corner

Comment of the week came from another of those obscure, self-appointed guardians of moral rectitude, The Campaign for Real Education. Radio 4 invited them to comment on the row about the dropping of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy from a GCSE syllabus because it deals with knife crime. In reply to the obvious point that there is also quite a bit of knife crime in Shakespeare, the real education chap agreed that Bill the Bard could stay - part of our national heritage you know - but then said that there were "uplifting", "modern" poets that could be studied - like Wordsworth, with his one about daffodils, and Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. Where do they get them from?