For my weekly writing spot on this site, see the One-Minute Mystic, with a new meditation posted every Monday. Also see The Village, the story of Misty Longings, England's most beautiful village, posted episode by episode earlier this year.       It's not all amusing ditties about the corgis, and cosy reflections on young royalty finding their feet. In fact, according to our departing poet laureate Andrew Motion, "No writing is as hard as this." Novelist, biographer and poet, Andrew Motion followed Ted Hughes in this post in 1999, and does not seem unfeignedly thankful for the experience. Indeed, he says that the appointment has been "very, very damaging to his work" – despite both Tony Blair and the Queen telling him at the outset that he "wouldn't have to do anything." Whether this was good psychology is open to question. It's hardly a Churchillian call to arms, and perhaps should have warned Motion of troubles ahead. Most actually hope they will have to do something on taking a new job; that it might have both substance and meaning. But Poet Laureate, official poet to the English monarch, is not your average employment. The post was first officially conferred on John Dryden by Charles II in 1670, though Chaucer in the 14th century had been called Poet Laureate for an annual allowance of wine. Both Wordsworth and Tennyson gave the declining post much needed impetus in the 19th century, but approached it in different ways. Before taking the job, Wordsworth stipulated that no formal effusions of sentiment should be expected of him, but Tennyson had no such qualms; he was happy to emote and effuse royally on every possible occasion. Big literary names have turned the post down, including Sir Walter Scott, William Morris and Philip Larkin; and you certainly wouldn't take it for the money. Traditionally, the stipend has been £100 per annum and a vat of wine. (Whatever the money, there has always been alcohol involved.) Andrew Motion recently received an increased yearly fee of £5,000. But despite such fabulous wealth, and the large wine cellar, he has become the first poet laureate to retire voluntarily for 400 years. He says the eight royal poems he's written – including pieces on Prince Charles' marriage to Camilla and the Queen Mother's 100th birthday – have been the hardest of his life. He needs empathy in order to write; needs in some way to be able to relate the event to his own experience; not always easy on Planet Royal. Where there's no empathy, there's no poem. He was, however, able to compose "Regime change" – a protest piece at the invasion of Iraq. It's a speech by Death, a bleak figure he's lived with himself. When he was 17, his mother had a riding accident and spent the next nine years in and out of a coma before she died. "To have had ten years working as laureate has been remarkable," he told The Guardian. "Sometimes it has been remarkably difficult – the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it's been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and glad to be giving it up." We walk the earth, scattering our truth. And sometimes the poet will sow it, in soil that is royal. More writings © Simon Parke