Carol Ann Duffy is the nation’s favourite poet after Shakespeare. ‘Poetry is our national art’, she tells me in her garden outside Manchester. Then she says, ‘I’ve got bird shit on my jumper.’ She gets up to find a cloth and turns back: ‘Shall we have a glass of champagne?’

Within two minutes the essential Carol Ann is all there: Her certainty about poetry and its place at the heart of things, her earthy straightforwardness, always present in her poetry, and, for such a serious person, a love of life and its good things, to be enjoyed without elitism or embarrassment. When I try and think of a poet she reminds me of – the presence – the person - it has to be Walt Whitman.

She is outspoken, direct, attractive in her ease about what she does and who she is, and just the kind of Poet Laureate Britain needs – not snobby, not class bound, not seeking personal advantage, political in that she wants to change things, still idealistic in that she believes she – and poetry- can change things.

And, of course, she’s a woman, she’s a Celt, and she’s gay.

When the news came that she had smashed through 341 years of male bardship, it was an incredible moment for women, as well as for poetry. She’s the real thing all right, with that combination of untamedness and seriousness that makes her both exciting and hard to ignore. But the Laureateship is an Establishment appointment – how does she feel about talking to the Queen and being Britain’s official poet?

‘I don’t have to write Royal Wedding poems, if that’s what you mean, or dirges on the Fire at Windsor Castle. If you Google Buckingham Palace/Poet Laureate, you’ll see the brief…’ She pauses a moment, ‘Poetry has changed since the days of Larkin – he ‘s a good poet, but poetry has changed for the better. It’s not a bunch of similarly educated men – it’s many voices, many styles. The edge has become the centre.’

She’s right. This is a very good tim...