Some days, not everyday mind…it seems some of us cannot, will not pray to the deity/ies, however from somewhere, God alone knows where(??!!), a prayer/thought/wish/longing utters itself…simply autonomously of ourselves. … Read More »Carol Ann Duffy Prayer: Reading by Moira Eribenne
‘Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.’ ( T. S. Eliot ‘Animula’) Think about your own associations with prayer and the spirit of connection. What is… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's entrancing poem 'Prayer' from Mean Time.
How does this poem compare to Carol Ann Duffy’s Prayer? George Herbert PRAYER. (I) PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age, Gods… Read More »George Herbert : Prayer
THE BLUE GUITAR The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, ‘You have a blue guitar, You cannot play things as they… Read More »Wallace Stevens
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayerutters itself. So a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stareat the minims sung by a tree,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy : Prayer
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide… Read More »W. B. Yeats: The Second Coming
( Please look under the A Level section too as there are detailed explorations of both texts) ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. 1)… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Stafford Afternoons and In Mrs Tilscher's Class
For next time find a word or phrase that identifies something about your childhood. (Carol Ann Duffy uses ‘cul-de-sac’ in her poem Stafford Afternoons). Think about why… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy One.
Oh, wasn’t there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself to herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and nobody worrying her? Wasn’t there anywhere… Read More »Life of Ma Parker : Katherine Mansfield
… And now he’s gone. I shall never have another bird, another pet of any kind. How could I? When I found him, lying on his back, with his eye… Read More »The Canary by Katherine Mansfield
The hand swept up two lumps of the brownest sugar she had seen for years. Rich darkness dropped like plums into her coffee cup without the faintest splash. You have… Read More »Maata
The laces baffled her and for once she wished for Ida. Such a challenge would have raised her spirits, but today she was alone. The dull grey ice lay across… Read More »Ice
And Cyril leaned forward and yelled, “Father’s still very fond of meringues.” At that Grandfather Pinner jumped as though he had been shot. “Don’t shout!” he cried. “What’s… Read More »Katherine Mansfield: The Daughters of the late Colonel
Katherine had used her stick all that autumn and the men in light blue trousers burning fires and bending in the smoke seemed part of that slow time. She had… Read More »Alfie 3
On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey-cake at the baker’s. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It… Read More »Miss Brill By Katherine Mansfield
IT seemed to the little crowd on the wharf that she was never going to move again. There she lay, immense, motionless on the grey crinkled water, a loop of… Read More »Katherine Mansfield: The Stranger
She could sit here, hidden behind her needles and think vaguely, like a stroll around some neglected country maze, all turnings and brief hopes without any direction or triumph. If she… Read More »Alfie 2
Carol Ann Duffy in ‘Education for Leisure’ again employs the banal for macabre ends. The very title with its oxymoronic implications cynically undermines any cosy, liberal ideas the reader might… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy : Education for Leisure
She was knitting for a boy she called Alfie. It was not something she had intended but the sleeves were now long enough to stretch over the boy’s slender wrists.… Read More »Alfie
