This is a cold poem in more ways than one.The subject matter is seasonally icy and so is the tone of the speaker. The insouciant delivery suggests pride and even aggressive… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Stealing -An Analysis and thoughts.(Part One)
I read this shortly after W H Auden’s famous poem Funeral Blues -both deeply moving poems about monumental loss. Both poems suggesting that (like Mansfield’s story, The Life of Ma Parker) ‘There was nowhere’ left… Read More »Sheenagh Pugh: The Bereavement of the Lion- Keeper An Analysis
(I read this last night as part of a WJEC GCE past English paper. A lovely gift of a poem). I love this poem’s intimacy. The speaker grumbles his way… Read More »WH Auden: Roman Wall Blues Analysis and thoughts.
Carol Ann Duffy’s Demeter is one of my favourite poems and moves me intensely. I think its position at the close of Duffy’s The World’s Wife is essential as it… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Demeter inspired this story about Shapes!
”Where I lived-winter and hard earth. I sat in my cold stone rooom choosing tough words, granite, flint, to break the ice.My broken heart- I tried that, but it skimmed,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Demeter and Miss Havisham's room.
Great Expectations is being shown over Christmas. It’s a new version with Gillian Anderson playing Miss Havisham. I was struck by a comment about Ms Anderson’s portrayal, made in a Telegraph… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa, Demeter, Havisham and Mrs Lazarus- Stones, Mourning and Identity!
Carol Ann Duffy conveys the abject stoniness of grief in her poem, Mrs Lazarus. The widow of the most famous ‘miracle’ in the Christian Bible narrates her own ‘death’ after… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Lazarus analysis revised.
Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry features on many GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate courses. Her poems are some of the most searched for on Google and on Amazon underlining her justifiable… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy Selected Poems: Analysis, Notes, Ideas.
Apparently this poem by Rosssetti and set to music by Holst, was voted the United Kingdom’s favourite carol . Today, walking my two dogs around a deserted park, I found myself singing the… Read More »Christina Rossetti and Carol Ann Duffy : In the Bleak Midwinter.
This is one of my favourite Carol Ann Duffy poems. It appears in Mean Time and has a witty pathos all of its own. Even as the poet receates… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Litany: An analysis revisited.
Pablo Neruda’s poem embraces the suffering endured by human beings because they choose to differentiate themselves so keenly and resolutely from one another. The I/thou relationship so fraught with misunderstanding,… Read More »Pablo Neruda: Too many Names- a tusi bite.
Someone might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of… Read More »Jude The Obscure Book One Chapter IV: Hardy's own bleak house of despair?
‘I once more smell the dew and rain.’ This is a truly rejuvenating poem, acknowledging human error and frailty, yet also celebrating the power of spiritual connection; the healing of perception through… Read More »George Herbert's The Flower: An Analysis and Tusi bite.
This is an old entry revisited where I ruminate over Carol Ann Duffy’s popularity in terms of her ability to make us feel nostalgic about experiences we may not have… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons: An another analysis-or why is Carol Ann Duffy so popular?
‘Where are you going?’ Such a simple question. Yet the man who asked George was not a simple man. He was eager to talk because he had lost many things;… Read More »George goes for a walk.
How many times in our childhoods are we asked the question: ‘Where are you going?’ And here in Carol Ann Duffy’s evocative recollection of an afternoon adventure, we re-enter the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons: An Analysis Revisited.
And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful Wasn’t I fragrant and young? Look… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa: The last stanza revised..
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the… Read More »Philip Larkin 'Wants': A an analysis
A Revisitation! Medusa is powerfully associated with her feelings. She is so attuned to her feelings in fact, that they seem to have very independent life of their own! ‘Association’ with one’s… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa An Analysis (Revised) of the first three stanzas
Revisitation! Medusa’s infamous stare reduces all who come near her to stone. I can imagine that such power at certain points of my life might have been useful, but for… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa: An Analysis
A Revisitation! Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Havisham was the very first poem I taught as a Private English Tutor and was the first poem I encountered from the AQA Anthology.… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Havisham: An Analysis. FREE VIDEO!
I read this poem just now and found myself listening to its sounds : rather like the pulse of a human heart or the ticking of a clock in the corner… Read More »Louis Macneice's The Sunlight on the Garden: Accepting life's simple pleasures. :
Carol Ann Duffy’s bleak retrospect below on a finished love affair, justifies very clearly the title of the poem and collection: ‘Mean Time’. The loss of love’s ‘light’ and time’s… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time: Night walks for hearts.
Lock the door. In the dark journey of our night two childhoods stand in the corner of the bedroom watching the way we take each other to bits to stare… Read More »Close by Carol Ann Duffy: Intimacy lost and found.
Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the… Read More »The Magi by W B Yeats: The Endless dissatisfaction of Desire?
Jeanette Winterson’s reading of her new book, Why be happy when you could be normal? at the Royal Exchange on Sunday 30th October was wonderful in the most real sense of… Read More »Jeanette Winterson's Rapturous visit to Manchester's Royal Exchange!
I love the way both Winterson and Duffy capture the utter disorientation of love. Love is finding your way and losing your way at the same time. Certainty and complacency… Read More »The Bewilderment of rapture! Carol Ann Duffy and Jeanette Winterson
Today I shall puff on an uncharacteristic cigar by way of a fond farewell to of one of TV’s greatest, most loved and iconic detectives, Peter Falk, the singular… Read More »Columbo : The Mackintosh No More! By Moira Eribenne
One of the most useful and practical techniques advocated by NLP involves taking responsibility for your life and behaviour at cause rather than at effect. Jimmy Petruzzi’s new book about… Read More »Excel in English: Are you performing at cause or at effect?
In 2008 I published a long essay on Carol Ann Duffy’s powerfully erotic poem, Warming her Pearls, comparing it not unsurprisingly to Sarah Waters’ tantalising Neo-Victorian Thriller, Fingersmith. The essay… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Warming her pearls: Revisiting my review.
