A reading of a modern sonnet ‘Prayer’ is one of Carol Ann Duffy’s most popular and widely-studied poems, and packs an impressive emotional punch in just fourteen lines. But how does Duffy create such a powerful poem out of some very ordinary things – practising piano scales, or the BBC […]
A reading and gloss of Duffy’s poem ‘The Love Poem’ appeared in Carol Ann Duffy’s 2005 collection Rapture. It’s a love poem about love poetry, which uses other poets’ words to create a collage. You can read ‘The Love Poem’ here; in this post we’re going to track down the […]
A poem for the texting generation Carol Ann Duffy’s short poem ‘Text’ might be the first great poem written about texting and text messages. It appeared in her 2005 collection Rapture. You can read ‘Text’ here; this post offers some notes towards an analysis of the poem. ‘Text’ seems straightforward, […]
The best poems by Carol Ann Duffy selected by Dr Oliver Tearle Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955) was the UK Poet Laureate from 2009 until 2019, but she has been a major voice in contemporary British poetry for over thirty years, since her first collection, Standing Female Nude, was published […]
A critical reading of Duffy’s Shakespeare poem Carol Ann Duffy, born in 1955, is the UK Poet Laureate, a post she has held since 2009 and will hold until 2019. Her 1999 collection The World’s Wife contains a number of poems written about the female other halves of famous male figures […]