Carol Ann Duffy, who was born in Scotland in December of 1955, has become one of the best-loved poets alive today. Many themes come to mind when one envisions Duffy’s body of work, but the most prevalent is love— familial and romantic. Her love poems are generally written in the form of a monologue and deal with situations and people that poetry does not normally touch on. Her writing can be both playful and serious as she explores topics such as queer identity, the power of language, and feminism. She is admired for the way she plays with words and enhances or alters their meanings.
Some of Duffy’s best-known poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), The World’s Wife (1999), and Rapture (2005). More recently, she has taken to writing verse for children as well as adults. Collections published in the 2010s include Love Poems in 2010 and Sincerity in 2018. In 2009 she was named Britain’s first female Poet Laureate. She famously only agreed to take on the role because no other woman had previously held it before her.
‘Anne Hathaway’ by Carol Ann Duffy is told from the perceptive of Shakespeare’s wife who discusses their enduring love through the symbol of a bed.
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
‘Mrs. Midas’ by Carol Ann Duffy uses a contemporary feminist perspective to depict the shocking transformation of the mythological character, King Midas.
It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.
Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Havisham’ is a response to Charles Dickens’s portrayal of the character Miss Havisham in his famous novel Great Expectations. This poem refers to the character as “Havisham” rather than “Miss Havisham.”
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
‘The Way My Mother Speaks’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes a speaker’s developing connection to her mother’s way of speaking.
I say her phrases to myself
in my head
or under the shallows of my breath,
restful shapes moving.
The day and ever. The day and ever.
‘Valentine’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a memorable poem that talks about an onion that the poet gives her partner as a valentine-gift.
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
Duffy’s ‘The Love Poem’ is a collection of verses from other love poems, composed by poets like Shakespeare, Sidney, Donne, Shelley, Barrett and Browning.
Till love exhausts itself, longs
for the sleep of words -
my mistress' eyes -
to lie on a white sheet, at rest
‘Nostalgia’ by Carol Ann Duffy explores the moment in which the term ‘Nostalgia’ was coined following the crusades of 17th-century Swiss mercenaries.
Those early mercenaries, it made them ill –
leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air
to go down, down. What they got
was money, dull, crude coins clenched
‘Words, Wide Night’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a short ten line poem that speaks on the impossibility of putting love into words.
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
‘Beautiful’ by Carol Ann Duffy explores the physical and mental damage that can come from beauty by tracing the lives of four women.
She was born from an egg,
a daughter of the gods,
divinely fair, a pearl, drop-dead
gorgeous, beautiful, a peach,
‘In Your Mind’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes a detailed daydream in which the reader of the poem embarks on a strangely familiar trip.
The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?
Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon
one autumn in England, and in your mind
you put aside your work and head for the airport
with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave
on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.
‘Prayer’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes the different forms a prayer can take in the modern world, and how those forms provide comfort.
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
‘Death of a Teacher’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a moving poem. In it, the poet discusses a personal loss she suffered and how it affected her.
The big trees outside are into their poker game again,
shuffling and dealing, turning, folding, their leaves
drifting down to the lawn, floating away, ace high,
on a breeze. You died yesterday.
‘The Good Teachers’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes the school life of a young girl who has strong opinions about which teachers are good and which are not.
You run round the back to be in it again
No bigger than your thumbs, those virtuous women
size you up from the front row. Soon now,
Miss Ross will take you for double History.
‘A Child’s Sleep’ by Carol Ann Duffy describes the ideal, peaceful sleep of a child, who is watched over by her mother as she dreams.
I stood at the edge of my child's sleep
hearing her breathe;
although I could not enter there,
I could not leave.
Not tonight, I’m dreaming
in the heart of the honeyed dark
in a boat of a bed in the attic room
in a house on the edge of the park
where the wind in the big old trees
creaks like an ark.
If she were here
she'd forget who she was,
it's been so long,
maybe nurse, a nanny,
maybe a nun—
Anon.
If you were made of stone,
your kiss a fossil sealed up in your lips,
your eyes a sightless marble to my touch,
your grey hands pooling raindrops for the birds,
your long legs cold as rivers locked in ice,
if you were stone, if you were made of stone, yes, yes.
‘Bees’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a thoughtful poem that explores writing. The poet uses bee imagery to describe the process of creation.
Here are my bees,
brazen, blurs on paper,
besotted; buzzwords, dancing
their flawless, airy maps.
I'm ten years away from the corner you laugh on
with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.
The three of you bend from the waist, holding
each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.
‘Betrothal’ appears in Carol Ann Duffy’s T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection of poetry Rapture (2005). It offers readers a speaker’s desperate attempts to submit herself through the institution of marriage.
I will be yours, be yours.
I'll walk on the moors,
with my spade.
Make me your bride.
‘Circe’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a poem about Circe’s reassertion of control over her life and how she now considers men.
I'm fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig,
of the tusker, the snout, the boar and the swine.
One way or another, all pigs have been mine -
under my thumb, the bristling, salty skin of their backs,
in my nostrils here, their yobby, porky colognes.
The moon is nearer than where death took you
at the end of the old year. Cold as cash
in the sky's dark pocket, its hard old face
is gold as a mask tonight. I break the ice
over the fish in my frozen pond, look up
as the ghosts of my wordless breath reach
for the stars. If I stood on the tip of my toes
and stretched, I could touch the edge of the moon.
‘Delilah’ by Carol Ann Duffy focuses on the story of Delilah. It illuminates her individuality and how she felt about Samson.
Teach me, he said—
we were lying in bed—
how to care.
I nibbled the purse of his ear.
What do you mean?
Tell me more.
He sat up and reached for his beer
‘Demeter’ by Carol Ann Duffy is about a mother’s love for her daughter and how it transcends time. It focuses on the mythological story of Demeter and Persephone.
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
‘Deportation’ appears in Carol Ann Duffy’s Somerset Maugham Award winner book of poetry “Selling Manhattan” (1987). This piece speaks on themes of exile, linguistic supremacy, and cultural dominance.
They have not been kind here. Now I must leave,
the words I've learned for supplication,
gratitude, will go unused. Love is a look
in the eyes in any language, but not here,
not this year. They have not been welcoming.
World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple.
We are in our element but we are not free.
Outside this world you cannot breathe for long.
The other has my shape. The other's movement
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.
Who’ll know then, when they walk by the grave
where your bones will be brittle things – this bone here
that swoops away from your throat, and this,
which perfectly fits the scoop of my palm, and these
‘Epiphany’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a short poem that describes the drastic and emotional ways in which one person’s life has changed due to a relationship.
Not close my eyes to the light
when the light
is in my head,
‘Foreign’ by Carol Ann Duffy is a poem which casts the reader as an alienated foreigner in the city they’ve live in for twenty years.
Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years.
There are some dismal dwellings on the east side
and one of them is yours. On the landing, you hear
your foreign accent echo down the stairs. You think
in a language of your own and talk in theirs.
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