His poetry is difficult, his images obscure, and when he gave a reading of The Waste Land in front of the Royal Family the Queen Mother got the giggles at “this lugubrious man in a suit”.

Yesterday, however, more than 90 years after the publication of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, the suspicion with which the British public usually regard modern poetry was laid aside when T. S. Eliot was announced as the nation’s favourite poet.

In a BBC online poll which seemed to eschew the obvious crowd pleasers, Eliot narrowly beat John Donne and Benjamin Zephaniah. John Betjeman managed eighth place while Rudyard Kipling, whose If was previously voted the nation’s favourite poem, did not even make the top ten.

The former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said that the vote represented the transformation of Eliot from a poet once widely regarded as incomprehensible. “When he published The Waste Land 80-odd years ago there was a storm of people saying, ‘What the hell does this mean? It is barbaric and outrageous to overthrow the orthodoxies of poetry’.”

Not, he said, that his poetry was any easier now. “It is perfectly reasonable and in a way right to admit that one struggles to understand The Waste Land. It is a poem that emphasises that there is something which eludes complete understanding. When I first read it as a schoolboy I thought, ‘What the hell is that?’ But I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

There could, he admitted, also be another factor at play: the popularity of the musical Cats, based on Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. “I think that Cats has taken Eliot to an audience that he would certainly not have reached otherwise.”

Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, said it showed that people had more sophisticated tastes than they are usually given credit for. “It is also very interesting that we have finally got over the shock of the new poetry that was written in 1917.”

She added: “If you are forced to choose one poet, you want one that packs an awful lot in. I don’t think many people pack more in than Eliot.”

The day before the result, she said, they did a straw poll in the office. “There were nine Eliots, one Carol Ann [Duffy], one Sylvia Plath and one Keats. We also had the auditor in; Benjamin Zephaniah was the accountant’s choice.”

More than 18,000 votes were cast in the online poll, which was released to mark National Poetry Day, with readers choosing from 30 poets.

The Top 10:

1. T. S. Eliot

2. John Donne

3. Benjamin Zephaniah

4. Wilfred Owen

5. Philip Larkin

6. William Blake

7. William Butler Yeats

8. John Betjeman

9. John Keats

10. Dylan Thomas

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