Mexican poet laureates

Xochipilli (see below) now resides in the British Museum which may explain why he looks rather morose for a god of poetry and dancing. He is hemmed in with a sculpture of a rattlesnake at his back and camera-clutching day trippers like me goggling in front.


I wanted a picture of X, partly because his name means 'flower prince' and partly because I'd just read an article in Red Pepper about poetry and activism. The Red Pepper article talks about poetry used as a weapon against oppression, a way of challenging authority and exposing the lies and shortcomings of those who have power.


As poetry often has pattern and rhythm, like an incantation, it can act as an adrenalin shot, revealing the world more sharply, if not more clearly. So is its natural home on the barricades or can it just as easily become an ode to the general in his palace?

One of the wonderful things about poetry is that it can often feel like a personal message, whispered to you alone. Paul Valery said prose is to poetry what walking is to dancing. Perhaps Xochipilli, god of dance and poetry, had whispered in his ear.

Evidence of poetry's enduring power is embodied in Xochipilli. Here is a medium so alluring, so persuasive it has to be controlled, channeled through an officially designated representative - a sort of Aztec version of Britain's poet laureate. Maybe that's why X looks depressed, he's contemplating yet another official royal occasion to be celebrated in verse.