‘Falling in love is glamorous hell’ writes Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in her poem ‘You’ collected in Rapture. Madeleine Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles has recently won the… Read More »The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller: Analysis of Desire Part One.
Shelley’s Ozymandias is a striking poem about the abuse or the futility of power. I say striking because it contains images that remain with you and will not go away.… Read More »Shelley’s Ozymandias:An Analysis Revisited!
Shelley’s Ozymandias is a striking poem about the abuse or the futility of power. I say striking because it contains images that remain with you and will not go away.… Read More »Shelley’s Ozymandias:An Analysis Revisited of the AQA Poem-character and voice!
We are on the verge of the GCSE English examinations once more, so I thought I would look again at Carol Ann Duffy’s Hour, a poem originally collected in Carol Ann… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'Hour': Goldfinger, Midas and the ecstasy of Love!.
Reading a poem can challenge you. It can take you away from the certainties associated with your understanding. and this can be uncomfortable and exasperating. What is the point you may say?Sometimes however, although… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Hour: An Analysis-finding the key to a poem?
Tightly-folded bud, I have wished you something None of the others would: Not the usual stuff About being beautiful, Or running off a spring Of innocence and love – They… Read More »Philip Larkin’s ‘Born Yesterday’: An Analysis-GCSE English AQA.
Sometimes as you approach the Easter holiday break, the texts you studied seem distant memories, and you feel less confident about your knowledge and essay writing. If this is you… Read More »English GCE, GCSE Revision Bolton, Manchester and Bury.
Today is a day when we may all feel the hint of the ‘away and see’ part of life. Already at 8-30am there is a soft glow of slow sunshine… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'Away and See': An analysis to feed creative writing!
As Easter approaches students are aware of the nearness of May with the GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate examinations. If you are facing any of these examinations and need a… Read More »English Tuition Manchester, Bolton and Bury: GCSE English Descriptive Writing Boost
Tusi Notes Carol Ann Duffy’s Havisham and Dickens’ Great Expectations. Carol Ann Duffy is an expert at exploring the uneasy aftermath of love. Both her poetry collections Mean Time and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Havisham and Dickens' Great Expectations.
I am not sure if this is a great poem, I rather think it too abrupt and unfinished to linger on in the mind, as great poems tend to do. … Read More »Mary Coleridge's The Moment: An Analysis
Carol Ann Duffy’s After Mrs Tiresias is a very popular poem at live readings. Females in the audience enjoy the spirited irony of the joke about a man who becomes a… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'From Mrs Tiresias' An Analysis.
Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy is the most searched for Duffy poem on Google. The poem is a cyber space megastar and today I felt I would examine the poem… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Valentine: An analysis before a Tusi Note!
Steinbeck’s final moments of his short novel, Of Mice and Men are both tragic and yet hopeful. The reader recognises that Steinbeck is offering a glimpse of an equal, potential… Read More »Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men-How Do we read the ending? A Short Analysis and Tusi Note!
Medusa has been explored several times on this blog and I will be writing a full length, Tusi Note on the poem in the next few days. However Carol Ann… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Medusa Analysis: Rage as petrification-FREE VIDEO!
The face in the wall heard voices through the old plaster. Hoarse voices whose breathing came slowly and hard as if time was short. Houses like these carried memories deep… Read More »The Plasticine Men: The Changeover Day.
Tusi Notes Just the ideas you need to be different! ”This tender and elemental love poem to our first and most enduring love, that of the mother and child, is… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Before You were Mine’: A Tusi Note – Buy it Now!
Sometimes, not all times because Carol Ann Duffy is human and works hard and perhaps writes more than her energies allow, Duffy finds a word that changes everything in a… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post: An Analysis Revisited.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of exploring this poem in the AQA Anthology, where it is enjoying the attention of today’s students once again. It has a very particular, if… Read More »Robert Browning’s ‘My last Duchess’ : An analysis of this AQA poem-revisited.
I was just playing with the google search engines when I saw this entry about Carol Ann Duffy’s Education For Leisure on page two. Sometimes when I write something and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Education for Leisure: An Analysis Revisited
I am revisiting this analysis as I have just been reading through the AQA English Anthology and this Carol Ann Duffy poem is included in the ‘relationships’ section. The poem… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Hour’ An Analysis Revisited
Yesterday I explored AQA’s Anthology poem Quickdraw from Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture collection. I did express my disappointment with that poem and perhaps its rather self conscious contrivance.The row didn’t… Read More »An Analysis of Carol Ann Duffy's Disgrace revisited.
Pip is a very susceptible and vulnerable young man, who reads his emotionally sabotaging companions, Miss Havisham and Estella, very hopefully indeed! I have talked in another blog post about… Read More »Dickens' Great Expectations Chapter 29(BkII,Chapter10)Brief Analysis- Pip misreads his destiny!
(For a stanza by stanza analysis and commentary on Quickdraw please click here. ) This poem is taken from Carol Ann Duffy’s collection Rapture, for which she won the T… Read More »AQA English Anthology: Analysis of Carol Ann Duffy’s Quickdraw.
T S Eliot’s Little Gidding was his favourite poem. This section of the poem plays with our sense of orientation, our certainties around time and life’s direction. I find I… Read More »T S Eliot Little Gidding: Carol Ann Duffy Beyond the language of the Living?
If ‘home’ is often a place of comforting repetition and ritual, Pip’s home with the ‘rampaging’ Mrs Joe in Dickens’ Great Expectations is a place of imaginative improvisation and daily… Read More »Charles Dickens' Great Expectations Chapter 8:Pip and his beginner's mind!
I love dreaming. Our night walks with out limits. Coach trips with colour. None of those daily conventions like looking at your watch. Being tied to time. But dreams can be… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Night Writing: Images working their hearts out?
We came from our own country in a red room which fell through the fields, our mother singing our father’s name to the turn of the wheels. My brothers cried,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'Originally' poem from 'The Other Country' and 'Selected Poems':Stanza One.
A student studying at Winstanley College, Wigan, shared this tip yesterday and right in the middle of a mock English A level paper, I couldn’t help smiling out loud! For… Read More »English GCSE, GCE, postcard learning tip: How to focus your thinking!
It began when they moved house of course. They had all been quite settled as their Aunt Dorothy used to say to anyone who would listen during her weekly trips to the supermarket.… Read More »English Tuition in Manchester, Bolton and Bury: The Plasticine men.
