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 this term works so effectively for you and how universal this term may be. Consider the challenge faced by poets in particular to universalise through the deployment of the local.
1) Read the extract from Great Expectations and consider the impressions constructed by the narrator around the figure of ‘Miss Havisham’. Look at the use of repetition and even the way in which she may be reanimated via the narratorial viewpoint. Is she a ‘revenant’ and if so how does she appear to the reader? Do you differ in our version of Miss Havisham from Pip?
2) Now consider Carol Ann Duffy’s revised version of Miss Havisham. How does this version differ? Which line has the greatest impact for you and why?
3) Is the revision of Miss Havisham interesting? How does it challenge pre-existing versions of women?
4) In groups explore the irony of resurrection in Mrs Lazarus. How far is this reanimation of the ‘dead’ a trope for considering other Duffy poems? Is the tense of the poem significant? How far is the experience of mourning dependent for its expression upon hard sounds and images in the poem?
5) Again in groups, explain the meaning of the last stanza and especially two lines in ‘After Mrs Tiresias.’ Does anything remain silent and unspoken? Why?