Collected Poems

by Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy has been a bold and original voice in British poetry since the publication of Standing Female Nude in 1985. Since then she has won every major poetry prize in the United Kingdom and sold over one million copies of her books around the world. She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009. Her first Collected Poems includes all of the poems from her nine acclaimed volumes of adult poetry - from Standing Female Nude to Ritual Lighting (2014) - as well as her much-loved Christmas poems, which celebrate aspects of Christmas: from the charity of King Wenceslas to the famous truce between the Allies and the Germans in the trenches in 1914. Endlessly varied, wonderfully inventive, and emotionally powerful, the poems in this book showcase Duffy's full poetic range: there are poems written in celebration and in protest; public poems and deeply personal ones; poems that are funny, sexy, heartbroken, wise. Taken together they affirm her belief that 'poetry is the music of being human'. Collected Poems is both the perfect single-volume introduction for new readers and a glorious opportunity for old friends to celebrate thirty years' work by one of the country's greatest literary talents. It confirms indisputably that 'Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time' (Rose Tremain, Guardian).

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

583 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2015

About the author

Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.

She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold this position.

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize.

Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memory’s caged bird won’t fly. These days
we are adjectives, nouns. In moments of grace
we were verbs, the secret of poems, talented.
A thin skin lies on the language. We stare
deep in the eyes of strangers, look for the doing words.
*
I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache
as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed
against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;
*
This love we have, grief in reverse, full rhyme, wrong place,
wrong time,
*
[…] water’s voice swearing its love love love in my ears,
as I drowned in belief.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contains poems from nine of Duffy’s previous collections, Standing Female Nude, Selling Manhattan, The Other Country, Mean Time, The World’s Wife, Feminine Gospels, Rapture, The Bees, Ritual Lightning, plus her, as the blurb has it, “much-loved”, Christmas Poems.
Standing Female Nude I have already read. As for the rest:-

From Selling Manhattan we have the embedded metaphor of a poem written as if by a ventriloquist’s dummy, revelation of the stories that roil beneath the surface in a Model Village, Absolutely deploys an impolite word to great effect, Yes, Officer conveys the plight of an accused person, Politico references Glasgow’s coat of arms to deplore the betrayal that was city’s industrial decline, Mouth, With Soap the purposelessness, in the grand scheme of things, of minding your language, Correspondents and Telegrams relate love affairs carried on through different communication media, and for personal reasons I loved the Jane Avril Dancing fragment of Three Paintings.
In The Other Country, Originally reflects on the experience of losing a part of your identity when as a child your family moves elsewhere while Too Bad seems to be about a hitman. Poet For Our Times rather wonderfully rhymes poet with show it and Serbo-Croat.
In Mean Time, the poem Litany expresses the enduring memory of the shame of speaking outside the bounds of politeness. Stafford Afternoons the lack of surprise in encountering a flasher. Prayer evokes the lyricism of the names from the shipping forecast.
The poems from The World’s Wife are brilliant reimaginings of myths, fairy tales and figures from history from the female viewpoint. Mrs Darwin, Frau Freud, Mrs Sisyphus and Mrs Icarus are particularly biting.
Feminine Gospels contains what its title suggests. Beautiful is about famous women throughout history, and how they were treated. The longest poem, The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High, might as well be a short story.
Rapture’s poems are mostly about love; fine on an individual basis but faced collectively begin to merge into one another. However, the sentiment “Falling in love is glamorous hell” seems about right and “When did your name change from a proper noun into a charm?” captures that ecstatic first flush perfectly
While some of the poems in The Bees do concentrate on or refer to that insect many do not. Three - LastPost, New Vows and Premonitions - reflect on the possible consolations the reversal of time could bring. The first of those and The Passing Bells derive inspiration from the work of Wilfred Owen. Big Ask examines the evasions those in power practice to avoid embarrassment.
Ritual Lightning must have been a very small volume when it was published on its own, with only 17 or so poems. Liverpool is a reflection on the Hillsborough tragedy, Birmingham demonstrates that extreme Islamophobia is no newcomer to these shores, White Cliffs’s “something fair and strong implied in chalk/what we might wish ourselves” shows up the distance between actuality and sense of self, Pathway is a remembrance of the poet’s father, while The Crown’s last three words, “not lightly worn,” are more a modern day desideratum than a historical truism.

The “much-loved” Christmas poems turn out to be five in number. The 11 page long Mrs Scrooge is of course inspired by A Christmas Carol and reworks that in a reversal. The always joy-dispensing Mrs Scrooge has outlived her husband but still encounters the three ghosts. It derives much of its impact from a pun. The Christmas Truce is a pretty much unadorned celebration of that peaceful interlude in The Great War’s first winter, Wenceslas encourages the charitable impulse, Bethlehem imagines the scene at that first Christmas, Dorothy Wordsworth’s Christmas Birthday does the same for 1799.

[David]

My latest 'new' poet discovery, following Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, et al. It's all Sharon King-Campbell's fault (and thanks for that).

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars (I never know how to rate such a big collection!!!!). I fell in love with Carol Ann Duffy's poetry in 2018 after reading her Greek myth poems at uni. Her poem about Icarus is still one of the most iconic poems. I was delighted when mum bought me this book for Christmas a couple of years ago. I looked through it in my darkest moments in January hoping to find some words of wisdom. I decided to properly read it this Christmas.

[kammie!!? · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not this particular book but many of her poetry and I'm unsure which book they all are in...

Read them for school.

[Hayley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think as a rule I prefer anthologies with various poets than complete works of one poet. I did not like the poetry in the first half of this collection at all. The second half I enjoyed much more and recognised many poems that I had read previously. The poetry in The World’s Wife, Feminine Gospels, Rapture and The Bees were very much to my liking.

For me this collection reminded me of a line in a nursery rhyme. “When it was good it was very good but when it was bad it was horrid.” This all subjective and personal taste. I am going to rate this a four for the second half of the collection and pretend that the first half didn’t exist.

I like the way Carol Duffy used imagery in her poetry and I like when she uses words of a similar letter or sound as it reads very well out loud. Perhaps what I like most is her interpretation of mythical or well known people. Ie. The poem Atlas, Achilles, Mrs Quasimodo.

Particular attention should be brought to the simply outstanding poem The Last Post. The Fallen Soldier is also very good.

[Antonio Di · Rating 3 out of 5]

Duffy è una certezza. Ogni suo poema, ogni verso sta lì a sorprenderti, ad aprirti il cuore e portarlo su una dimensione diversa. Una delle più grandi voci della poesia contemporanea. In questa raccolta dei "Collected poems" ci si perde nella sua vasta produzione di poemi brevi, ma anche lunghi o lumghissimi. Per capirne il senso profondo ed entrare dentro i suoi versi a volte, nei poemi più locali, dedicati magari a singoli luoghi o eventi locali inglesi, bisogna aver chiariti i contorni e le specificità cui si riferisce, ma ciò non toglie nulla alla musicalità dei versi, ai giochi di rima e alle figure metaforiche potenti. Certo sulle centinaia di poemi non ci si può aspettare che tutti catturino l'attenzione e rapiscano i sensi allo stesso modo, ma nel suo complesso, seppur forse troppo vasta, la raccolta fa trovare a chiunque un poema del cuore e qualcosa di indimenticabile.

[Deborah Schuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had bought The World's Wife years ago and thoroughly enjoyed the various takes/tales of the wives of famous men. Very witty and amusing. I bought this collection of her poetry books and found much to love, enjoy, and think over. Highly recommended!

[Rhett · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to review a 600 page collection of poems. The poetry of Carol Ann Duffy which is collected here ranges from cynical and acerbic to wildly romantic. I didn’t really gel with the first few sections, but some of the poems in the second half were just incredible.

[Annette Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yu

[Josie Fitz]

“The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High” is one of my most favorite poems ever

[Jaq · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting blend of styles.

[Nuri · Rating 2 out of 5]

"And we're all owed joy,
sooner or later,
The trick's to remember whenever
it was, or to see it coming."

I had looked forward to reading Duffy for a long time. However, this collection really didn't excite me. I was actually quite bored and kept resisting the urge to leave it mid-way.

There are a few poems in the first 200 something pages that I enjoyed.

• Correspondents

• All Days Lost Days

• Colours By Someone Else

• By Heart

• Strange Place

• Miles Away

• We Remember Your Childhood Well

• Survivor

• Moments of Grace

• First Love

• Sleeping

• Text

• You

[Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I typically, don't read much poetry; but, Carol Ann Duffy's poetry, has a captivating quality, I find difficult to describe. Perhaps, it is a lack of exposure. I happen to be going through the list of recent U.K. Poet Laureates and their work. Recommended.

[Bohemian Bluestocking · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my video response to the book and listen to my reading of a few of my favorite poems: https://youtu.be/QjzUrUPNIH0

[T.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The past is the future waiting for dreams
and will find itself there.
I came in a cloak of cool luck
and smiled at the world.