Rapture

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Carol Ann Duffy, one of the most significant names in contemporary British poetry, has achieved that rare feat of both critical and commercial success. Her work is read and enjoyed equally by critics, academics and lay readers, and it features regularly on both university syllabuses and school syllabuses. Some critics have accused Duffy of being too populist, but on the whole her work is highly acclaimed for being both literary and accessible, and she is regarded as one of Britain’s most well-loved and successful contemporary poets.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - Pan Macmillan Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - Pan Macmillan

CAROL: So, you’re thinking in terms of legacy, but I don’t think in those terms, so, I would have to say the idea of legacy has occurred to me.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’). What is Duffy trying to say? One way to interpret ‘The Love Poem’ and its use of previous poets’ words is to say that the affair being described in the poem – and in the whole of Rapture – is over (as the final poem in the volume, simply called ‘Over’, will make clear). Duffy’s reference to ‘an epitaph’ in ‘The Love Poem’ hints at this: she is trying to memorialise or enshrine her love affair in words that will last, like those of the poets she quotes. (The opening words of the poem, ‘Till love exhausts itself’, also hints at the end of the affair.) CAROL: Yes, I think it’s very important to support young writers in a variety of different ways, either with workshops or teaching or poetry readings, um, festivals, competitions; so I’ve been involved in all of that because I think it’s, um, hugely enriching to pledge the arts: literature, music, theatre, visual arts—all of them in the centre of young people's lives.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - Poem Analysis

CAROL: So, you’ve got an audience there who might not have read the poem and you’ve also in a sense having to keep their attention or entertain them, you might introduce the poem by saying ‘I enjoy subversing this— CAROL: And it’s in a different context rather than the private world of the writer. What goes on in the poetry reading is a different thing. 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 […]’.

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The voice is that of a first person speaker, we can assume the poet, using the pronoun “I”, and referring to “we” of the relationship. Poet, playwright and freelance writer Carol Ann Duffy was born on 23 December 1955 in Glasgow and read philosophy at Liverpool University. She also writes picture books for children, and these include Underwater Farmyard (2002); Doris the Giant (2004); Moon Zoo (2005); The Tear Thief (2007); and The Princess's Blankets (2009). The United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. RORY: Um, yeah, so you’re, y’know, you’ve been writing poetry for decades at this point. Were there any initial role models or kind of mentors that you had, especially at an early age, that either got you into poetry or helped inspire some of your poems, um, something along those lines?

Rapture, By Carol Ann Duffy | The Independent | The Independent Rapture, By Carol Ann Duffy | The Independent | The Independent

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.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. MILLY: I was here when you last came to the University and did your talk in the Issac Newton Building, and when you last came you spoke a little bit about subversion and finding something in something that’s already been written. Is that something that you practice a lot in your writing, like looking at other poet’s work or just like found items, do you kind of try and find—