Rapture

Product Information

Duffy's poems are studied in British schools at ISC, GCSE, National 5, A-level, and higher levels. [35] [36] In August 2008, her "Education for Leisure," a poem about violence, was removed from the GCSE AQA Anthology, following a complaint about its references to knife crime and a goldfish being flushed down a toilet. The poem begins: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything./I have had enough of being ignored and today/I am going to play God." The protagonist kills a fly, then a goldfish. The budgie panics and the cat hides. It ends with him, or her, or them, leaving the house with a knife. "The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm." [37] Falling in love is a complex and messy business, from the churning of emotions on finding someone who might be that one special person, the passion of an early relationship, the comfort of a steady companion and the turmoil and angst with there are stumbles and breaks.

The three strong books that made her name in the Nineties blazed with voicings; with dramatic characters, a bomber, a psychopath, an American buying Manhattan. This voicing power emerged again in The World’s Wife, along with the same sharp humour, social criticism and satire. But those collections ended in love poems and you felt that this, in the end, was what really drove Duffy’s work. In Rapture, it comes to its full flowering: ruthless, sensuous, tender; utterly modern, utterly classical. ( Independent, 16 September 2005) Duffy’s more disturbing poems also include those such as ‘Education for Leisure’ ( Standing Female Nude) and ‘Psychopath’ ( Selling Manhattan) which are written in the voices of society’s dropouts, outsiders and villains. She gives us insight into such disturbed minds, and into the society that has let them down, without in any way condoning their wrongdoings: ‘Today I am going to kill something. Anything. / I have had enough of being ignored […]’ (‘Education for Leisure’). About Carol Ann Duffy". The Poetry Foundation. 18 March 2003 . Retrieved 2 June 2020– via poets.org. Duffy uses a beautiful description here referring to the clouds as a prayer of rain. This is a nice nod to the poem’s religious title and actually in itself is quite a clever collective noun for clouds. The end of the line is enjambment and this helps the pace of the poem, although it is an enjambment line it does not dismiss the rhyming pattern.

If love, as Padel suggests, has always been at the centre of her poetry, this is not only romantic and sexual, it is also both daughterly and intensely maternal. Myth and fairy-tale are vital to her imagining of the world, but they are given contemporary voices in her poems. The combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms, has won her a very wide audience of readers and listeners. As fellow-poet Sean O’Brien wrote: ‘Poetry, like love, depends on a kind of recognition. So often with Duffy does the reader say, “Yes, that’s it exactly,” that she could well become the representative poet of the present day.’ People come to the work of Carol Ann Duffy via various routes. She rose to public prominence as Poet Laureate in 2009 (or, it could be argued, ten years earlier when she was apparently passed over in favour of ‘safer’ choice Andrew Motion). Her appointment made her the first female Laureate since the position was created in the seventeenth century – she reportedly only accepted the post for this reason – and also the first Scottish-born and openly gay poet in the role. Born in 1955 in Glasgow, Duffy was brought up in Staffordshire. As a student in Liverpool she wrote poems and plays, became involved with "the scene" and Adrian Henry. With the collection Standing Female Nude (1985) she established her name. Three other important collections followed: Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990) and Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread poetry award and the Forward prize. For someone who has made a comparatively quiet career, away from the public eye and the literary celebrity round, she has a loyal following and a high profile. When the appointment of a new poet laureate was last in the news, it was she who commanded the popular vote. She was made a CBE in 2001. Sexual love is enacted by the moon, stars and clouds, ocean and shore, witnessed by the lush forest floor. A poet as accomplished as Carol Anne Duffy can work on the grandest of scales, and go forth unabashedly, over the top. If Shakespeare is perched on her shoulder,

Once again the sky is referenced but the change of tone changes the view of the sky. Here the sky is still described as large but there are suggestions of it being a network joining places together. Perhaps a metaphor for how the narrator is now joined with their lover? Assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. [51] Harrison, David (23 April 2011). "Royal wedding: Poet laureate writes verse for big day". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 . Retrieved 30 April 2011. Duffy is a very brave poet. Only pop songs are braver in their use of repetition, and in "Finding the Words" she succeeds in making an ordinary "I love you" into something extraordinary. Only gameshow hosts are braver in their use of puns, and in "Fall" she rushes headlong through at least five meanings of the word, to end with another pun in "your passionate gravity". BBC Radio 4 – Woman's Hour – The Power List 2013". BBC. Archived from the original on 19 March 2014 . Retrieved 17 July 2016.Career Granada TV, Guardian poetry critic 1988-89, poetry lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. Plays include Take My Husband (1982) and Cavern of Dreams (1984) Wouldn’t you love to know who this beloved is? From the poem “Name”, possibly a love poem to Marina Tsvetaeva (echoing “Poems for Blok”): She applied to the University of Liverpool to be near him, and began a philosophy degree there in 1974. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse, wrote a pamphlet, Fifth Last Song, and received an honours degree in philosophy in 1977. [3] She won the National Poetry Competition in 1983. She worked as poetry critic for The Guardian from 1988 to 1989, and was editor of the poetry magazine, Ambit. In 1996, she was appointed as a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and later became creative director of its Writing School. [6] In Duffy's case, however, this consensus is hardly new. Not since Philip Larkin has a living British poet straddled the commercial and critical arenas with such finesse. This has prompted several critics to seek common ground between the two authors, some thematic preoccupations to link the dyspeptic Hull librarian with his more expansive, approachable descendant. For her part, Duffy jokes that there is only one similarity. "We are both lesbian poets," she says.

She is an enormously impressive person, very strong, organised and decisive," said Tomkins. "I suspect that she has always been a risk-taker. She makes decisions on the spur of the moment and then runs with them." In 2011 Duffy, spearheaded a new poetry competition for schools, named Anthologise. The competition is administered by the Poetry Book Society and was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in September 2011. School students aged 11–18 from around the UK were invited to create and submit their own anthologies of published poetry. The 2011 Anthologise judges were Duffy; Gillian Clarke (National Poet for Wales); John Agard; Grace Nichols and Cambridge Professor of Children's Poetry, Morag Styles. The first ever winners of Anthologise were the sixth form pupils of Monkton Combe School, Bath, with their anthology titled The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead, which was described by Duffy as "assured and accomplished as any anthology currently on the bookshelves." [41] Plays and songs [ edit ] Find sources: "Carol Ann Duffy"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( April 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) a b "Interview: Carol Ann Duffy". Stylist. Archived from the original on 7 October 2011 . Retrieved 4 October 2011. Nonetheless, Feminine Gospels (2002), as the title suggests, is a concentration on the female point of view. It is a celebration of female experience, and it has a strong sense of magic and fairytale discourse. However, as in traditional fairytales, there is sometimes a sense of darkness as well as joy. Birth, death and the cycles and stages of life feature strongly, including menstruation, motherhood and aging. Duffy’s beloved daughter Ella was born in 1995, and her experience of motherhood has deeply influenced her poetry (as well as inspiring her to write other works for children). Poems such as 'The Cord' and 'The Light Gatherer' rejoice in new life, while ‘Death and the Moon’ mourns those who have passed on: ‘[…] I cannot say where you are. Unreachable / by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable / in the air, even if souls are stars […]’.The narrator uses interesting language in the first line of this stanza of the poem. They personify their thoughts and in doing so create a powerful piece of imagery. The fact that it refers to their thoughts as “uninvited” suggests that they are powerless to control how they feel and wouldn’t want to feel that way. This line definitely suggests that the narrator can’t get the object of their affection out of their head. The change in perception is echoed here. The air is given sentience! And this is all possible because of the feeling of love. Perhaps the insinuation here is that love is like oxygen! (Maybe Duffy is a fan of the band Sweet!) Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE, HonFBA, HonFRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". rse.org.uk . Retrieved 16 February 2018. Carol Ann Duffy (23 October 2014). Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday. Pan Macmillan. pp.5–. ISBN 978-1-4472-7151-2 . Retrieved 27 April 2018. Politics by Carol Ann Duffy". The Guardian. 13 June 2009. Archived from the original on 16 April 2012.

In Duffy’s poem the love she describes is fluctuating, romantic but also painful. Although it ultimately relates to a relationship on earth the religious hints are clearly present.

Anthologies 

This is quite skilfully done as the narrator uses the word assonance to prove their point but also uses assonance in the line. Clever stuff! I think what is trying to be said here is that they try and break with the norm to attain bliss, but up until this point it doesn’t seem to have been working!