Feminine Gospels

Product Information

BBC Radio 4 – Woman's Hour – The Power List 2013". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 March 2014 . Retrieved 17 July 2016. It is hard not to find that assumption of freedom heady. Even if, in this particular poem, the character is hardly given Duffy's approval, that readiness to move on is intoxicating. It teaches an odd, contemporary post-feminist courage; and perhaps that is the source of Duffy's huge popularity. The first section is varied in structure. Some paragraphs are short, while some are long. Duffy could be using the freeform structure of the section to reflect the myth of Helen of Troy. As a character born from myth, Duffy represents this fantasy depiction through the energetic and changing structure. The final stanza measures only two lines, perhaps reflecting her subjection at the hands of a patriarchal society. The shortened stanza represents her eventual demise and minimization in history. a b "Prof Carol Ann Duffy". Manchester Metropolitan University. Archived from the original on 10 May 2013 . Retrieved 2 November 2009. Another technique that Duffy uses throughout Beautiful is a caesura. Following or preceding important phrases within the poem, Duffy uses caesura. This caesura creates a slight metrical pause within the line. This pause then places emphasis on what comes before or after the caesura. In doing this, Duffy can focus the poem on key ideas without disrupting the rhythm of reading. In many places, this caesura appears incredibly blunt, such as ‘Beauty is fame.’, emphasizing the harshness of this statement.

Kinser, Jeremy (30 August 2010). "Thousands Attend Manchester HIV Vigil". Advocate.com . Retrieved 17 July 2016. In Stylist magazine, [27] Duffy said of becoming poet laureate: "There's no requirement. I do get asked to do things and so far I've been happy to do them." She also spoke about being appointed to the role by Queen Elizabeth II, saying: "She's lovely! I met her before I became poet laureate but when I was appointed I had an 'audience' with her which meant we were alone, at the palace, for the first time. We chatted about poetry. Her mother was friends with Ted Hughes whose poetry I admire a lot. We spoke about his influence on me." [27] The media twist her public perception. Known as ’Blonde Bombshell’, the media span her image into ‘Dumb beauty.’. Although nothing of the sort, the media enjoyed the idea that she was stupid, expanding this until it was the common perception of Marilyn Monroe. This directly contrasts with ‘Tough beauty’, Duffy draws a connection between the two women. Cleopatra had agency over her own image and was presented differently to the further exploited Marilyn. In every classroom, ‘Laughter, it seemed, was on the curriculum’, appearing everywhere. Even the ‘slightest thing’ causes an uproar, the girls making their female voices heard. The ‘grim Head’ cannot believe what is happening, her school is a place for those who ‘passed into legend’. Despite the ‘Silver medals and trophies and cups’, this was happening to her school. Polysyndeton connects the achievements, lessening their impact. This could symbolize those material achievements are nothing compared to personal ones. Structure: trisects unequal length lines. This is ironic as Duffy uses a structured form of dramatic monologueThe reference to ‘light’ is normally a positive association. Yet, for Monroe, even the most positive things are subverted. Duffy uses ‘under the lights’ to display how exposed Monroe was. Especially surrounding the rumored affair with President Kenedy, the world blamed her instead of the wildly powerful man who manipulated her. British Academy Fellowship reaches 1,000 as 42 new UK Fellows are welcomed". British Academy. 16 July 2015. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Bees (2011), winner of the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Christmas Truce (2011), Wenceslas: A Christmas Poem (2012), illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic; Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday (2014) and Sincerity (2018). Her children's poems are collected in New & Collected Poems for Children (2009). In 2012, to mark the Diamond Jubilee, she compiled Jubilee Lines, 60 poems from 60 poets each covering one year of the Queen's reign. In the same year, she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize.

Winterson, Jeanette. "About | Carol Ann Duffy". JeanetteWinterson.com. Archived from the original on 31 May 2013 . Retrieved 18 December 2009.Upon deciding on a man to be with, Helen ‘fled’. Again, Duffy uses caesura to emphasize this word. The use of ‘fled’ plays into the semantics of hunter and prey, with Helen being reduced to a fleeing animal. The reaction to this escape inspires ‘War’, the grave impact of her beauty leading to total chaos. Helen is followed and prosecuted only for her beauty. The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High by Carol Ann Duffy traces the developing wave of laughter. Duffy represents how female voices can lift each other up and lead to liberation.

The triple reception of ‘loved’ signals the happiness that Helen experiences. Now away from her perusers, she is able to experience the happiness of love. Yet, the men still follow her, wanting to contain her beauty from themselves. The poem moves chronologically through their lives, exploring their rise to fame and subsequent downfall. Each one is brutal, ending in a death caused by the exploitation of a patriarchal world. Although some of these women gained power within their lives, they could never truly flourish in a society that placed masculine identities as more influential. Duffy uses this poem to expose the horrors of society, women exploited until they come to a tragic end. Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana all died horrifically. Cleopatra died to a self-inflicted snake bite, Munroe to an overdose, and Diana to a car crash after being pursued by the ravenous press of England. The exploitation of women is rife throughout history, not stopping even as we move into the 21st century. The longest poem in the book is "The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High" and Duffy clearly enjoyed writing it. At one level the poem is a tour de force of sparkle and fizz. A mysterious giggle grows ineluctably into an all-consuming merriment that destroys the whole structure of grammar school propriety. Those who went to such a grammar school, as I did, will recognise the discipline and the drudgery, and recall the passionate longing to escape shared by teachers and students alike. At the same time it is hard to keep out of mind Searle's St Trinian's, or even the hearty attachments of Angela Brazil's captains and head girls. I found the poetry lay mainly in the asides: a teacher on a cold night, watching her own breath, a moment of loving abandon, an evocation of "The world like Quink outside". For all its accomplishment, this was not my favourite poem in the collection. Reynolds, Margaret (7 January 2006). "Review: Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy". The Guardian . Retrieved 27 April 2018. Duffy focuses on the physical strength of Helen’s pursuers. They have been described as ‘heaving an ore’, ‘tattooed’, and ‘muscle’. The masculinity present within these descriptions furthers the gender dynamic of the poem. Duffy is exploring how women are prosecuted by men, the poet constantly referring to the semantics of masculinity.The cave= yonic symbol of daughter's place of origin, linking her to the mother. Could also imply that women have been kept in the dark and that having children enables them to escape into the light Dufy links ‘day’ and ‘play’ through rhyme. In doing this, the speed of these lines begins to increase, Duffy speeding through The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High. The constant between the jubilant and flowing meter against the girls ‘kept indoors at break’ could represent the suppression of the feminist movement. Although physically constrained, ‘kept indoors’, they will eventually be able to break free. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect–as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, fairytale royals or girls-next-door. Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy – eBook Details The short, stunted ‘Beauty is fame’ is followed by a caesura. Duffy emphasizes the brutality of this line. Helen did not ask for beauty, yet she is made into an icon that must be pursued due to the male gaze. They look upon her and whisper her name, spreading her name across the globe. The perusers kill her husband, ‘sliced a last grin in his throat’, male rage and jealousy destroying Helen’s life. Besides the list-making nuns, she did have two inspiring English teachers at her secondary schools: June Scriven at St Joseph's Convent School and Jim Walker at Stafford Girls' High School. Duffy kept in touch with Scriven until her death this year and regrets that her foremer teacher was not able to read the "school" poem, "The Laughter at Stafford Girls' High", in the new book. At school Duffy absorbed the English canon but her teachers' knowledge stopped at Dylan Thomas. Duffy wanted the contemporary. She found it in the local bookshop, where on one shelf she could browse and buy (with the proceeds of a Saturday job) the Penguin Modern Poets series. These writers - Neruda, Prévert, Aimé Césaire - had a stronger influence on her writing than the English poets she studied at school.