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Poetry is the least flashy of art forms, and rarely gets to sit centre stage. However, tomorrow, with millions of people watching in Washington DC, and an estimated 1.5 billion more around the world on television, 46-year-old , a professor of African-American studies at Yale, will take to the stage and recite a poem after President Obama gives his inaugural speech.

At that point in the proceedings, people may be desperate for a break, but I suggest we all pay attention.

There are those () who have argued that little in contemporary poetry aspires to speak of, or for, the nation. Others say pop music is a likelier vehicle for that. Well, we've had - as Stevie Wonder, Shakira and Usher sang Higher Ground, and Bon Jovi and Bettye LaVette performed Sam Cooke's civil rights anthem, A Change is Gonna Come. And I wish I could have been there when Pete Seeger sang This Land is our Land.

But getting back to Elizabeth Alexander: She is a friend of Barack Obama (is he the first President to count poets among his close friends?) and the indications are she will step up to the mark and impress. She has five books of poetry to her name, not to mention a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

When asked what she is hoping to accomplish on the day, her answer was instructive: "I am hoping to offer language that will give people a moment of pause. That there is almost a quiet pool in which they are able to stand and think for a moment. I think that's part of what poetry does. It arrests us".

The proof will, of course, be in the poetry.

Previous inaugural poets have not had the most impressive track records. Indeed, Ms Alexander is only the fourth to fill the role. , at John F Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. It wasn't his finest hour, as the sun and wind dazzled him so much that he abandoned the poem he had written for the occasion, and instead recited "The Gift Outright", which he knew by heart.

President Clinton, too, had mixed success with his choices of poet - Maya Angelou the first time and Miller Williams the second (you are forgiven for saying "who he?"). The Republicans, it seems, are poet-phobic.

Walt Whitman once said: "To have great poetry there must be great audiences, too". He may have been talking about the quality of a poet's readership, but tomorrow, Ms Alexander's verse may well be broadcast to more people than any poem ever composed. Will such an historic occasion give rise to historic poetry? The public voice in American poetry of course has its roots in Whitman but, interestingly, the poet who struck a chord the most with Americans after 9/11 was W H Auden, with his chilling: "The unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night".

Fortunately for us, Ms Alexander cites Auden as among the poets she has been referencing for her the work she has prepared for this occasion. Others include Virgil, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Gwendolyn Brooks.

For Ms Alexander's poetry to be more than merely ceremonial, she will have to be both affecting and true. Perhaps she could do no worse than allude to John F Kennedy's when he attended the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst college: "When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. When power leads man towards his arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence."