Tag: Carol Ann Duffy

Review – The World’s Wife

Posted June 1, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The World’s Wife

The World's Wife

by Carol Ann Duffy

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 76
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

A collection of poems, each of which takes a famous male person or character -- Midas, Darwin, Quasimodo, Pontious Pilate, King Kong -- and presents their story from the perspective of the lesser-known wife.

Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife is at times playful, at times angry, and sometimes (but mostly not) tender. It’s giving voice to the women of various mythological and historical figures — Mrs Darwin, for example, though that isn’t a poem I like at all. Some of them do feel like angry cheap shots, I’ll be honest; I didn’t love them when I first read it, and I still don’t now, even though I do understand some of the anger and spite.

‘Mrs Tiresias’ definitely reads differently than it used to; I don’t think it’s meant to be about a transwoman, personally, but it can definitely be read that way, and that makes it a nasty one.

That said, there are some lovely ones as ever, and ‘Anne Hathaway’ remains a favourite:

“Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.”

And if you’d doubted that Duffy could write a sonnet, well, there you have it.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Rapture

Posted May 26, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Rapture

Rapture

by Carol Ann Duffy

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 62
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

Rapture, Carol Ann Duffy's seventh collection, is a book-length love-poem, and a moving act of personal testimony; but what sets these poems apart from other treatments of the subject is that Duffy refuses to simplify the contradictions of love, and read its transformations -- infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancor, separation and grief -- as simply redemptive or destructive. Rapture is a map of real love, in all its churning complexity. Yet in showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives, Duffy has accessed a new level of directness that sacrifices nothing in the way of subtlety of expression. These are poems that will find deep rhymes in the experience of most readers, and nowhere has Duffy more eloquently articulated her belief that poetry should speak for us all

I remembered Rapture being my favourite of Carol Ann Duffy’s collections, and I think it’s definitely high on the list, on reread, though it’s been a long time since I read the others. Her poems are always so readable: you know what she’s trying to say easily, even as the imagery is bright and the words are being played with. I generally prefer that over something more opaque, pedestrian as that may make some people think me — but I think Carol Ann Duffy’s poems have plenty to dig for, even while being readable and surface-level straightforward.

All of that is present here, along with the love and loss and longing. If I had to pick a favourite, it’d be ‘Art’:

“Art, the chiselled, chilling marble of our kiss;
locked into soundless stone, our promises,
or fizzled into poems; page print
for the dried flowers of our voice.“

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Faery Tales

Posted February 7, 2015 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Faery Tales by Carol Ann DuffyFaery Tales, Carol Ann Duffy

This collection is pretty much what you’d expect from Carol Ann Duffy, especially if you’ve read her collection, The World’s Wife. It’s various twists on fairy tales, or folk tales, or stories that use those tropes and images and structures. The tone is generally wry and funny, and also fairly modern and casual; if you like your fairy tales serious, strictly adhering to the ‘original’ (or rather, most well known) lines, or in archaic language, then this might not be for you.

In a way, it wasn’t a great thing to read straight through. I do like fairy tales, but a lot of these stuck fairly close to what I know well already, with relatively plain language. Easy to read, but not literary. Which is fine, but not something I can just read straight through; I’d have been better dipping in and out. Still, I love Carol Ann Duffy’s voice no matter what, so I did enjoy this — and bonus, it has a gorgeous cover.

Rating: 4/5

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Stacking the Shelves

Posted January 3, 2015 by in General / 28 Comments

With my book-buying resolutions just coming into force, this might be the busiest Stacking the Shelves post you’re gonna see from me in a while. On the other hand, I am now in charge of acquiring books for my library, so surely it won’t count if I just buy one or two or three for them…

Okay, okay, I’ll be good.

Library books

Cover of Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen Cover of Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick Cover of The Relic Guild by Edward Cox

Cover of Otter Country by Miriam Darlington Cover of Badgerlands by Patrick Barkham Cover of The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

My usual odd mix — I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to nature writing at the moment, but hey, I’ll go with it.

Fiction

Cover of Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel Cover of The Forever Watch by David Ramirez Cover of Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie Cover of The Black Chalice by Steven Savile

There were sales! And I still had a voucher! And it wasn’t January yet!

Non-fiction

Cover of The Ancient Paths by Graham Robb Cover of Ashoka by Charles Allen Cover of A History of the World in 12 Maps Cover of Confronting the Classics by Mary Beard

Pretty much all of these were bought with gift vouchers. I’ve read bad things about The Ancient Paths now, but it might be interesting anyway.

Awesome

Cover of Faery Tales by Carol Ann Duffy

Gift from my aunt for Christmas. <3 Look at that pretty cover! I had no idea this was even coming out until just before Christmas, but it’s Carol Ann Duffy, soooo. Yeah. Happy.

What’s everyone else been getting? Been breaking your 2015 bookish resolutions already?

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Review – Hand in Hand

Posted November 21, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Hand in Hand, ed. Carol Ann DuffyHand in Hand, ed. Carol Ann Duffy

This is a very interesting idea for an anthology, pairing up contemporary writers with an opposite-sex poet of their choice. The poems don’t seem to be necessarily related, though some are; it’s just a collection of poems that spoke to different people, and what different people have to say about love. As with most anthology situations, there are some gems here and some I couldn’t care less about.

As you might expect, I liked the contributions or inclusions of poets I’m already a fan of: Simon Armitage, Pablo Neruda, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Duffy herself. I was more bewildered by the proliferation of Robert Burns, whose work I’ve never really been attracted by, and the absence of Shakespeare. Overall, those surprises make the anthology a more interesting one: it’s not whatever stereotype you might conjure for an anthology of love poetry, but something different: a conversation about love, in many different forms, moods and tenses.

Rating: 4/5

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