The Map and the Clock

by Carol Ann Duffy (Contributor)

An anthology that gathers fourteen centuries of extraordinary verse - beginning with the first writings from the old languages of England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and culminating in some of our most recent poets, speaking in our present-day tongues.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Classics

736 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2016

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

[Johanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent anthology. It sustained us over a year of turmoil, illness and recovery, solitary reading across phone lines and snuggled reading together. As with any anthology different people will like and dislike individual pieces but the whole is a great amble through poetry's back story. There are some favourites and some new discoveries and it makes a fabulous lucky dip. It takes a chronological approach and often (but not always) offers lesser known works from well-known poets. Highly recommended

[Clarissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a bias towards modern poems (for example 1600-1700 is about 50 pages, 2000-now is 110 pages), but it is a beautiful collection which explores some of the perhaps less well known works of British and Irish poetry.

[leni swagger · Rating 5 out of 5]

chef’s kiss anthology 🙂‍↕️

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the large number of poetry anthologies on the bookshelves there has to be a pretty good justification for publishing a new one, a justification that goes beyond putting a Poet Laureate's name on the cover.

The Map and the Clock (nice title) starts very traditionally but does move into a few more obscure areas. The chronological structure of the book affords very little to distinguish the first chapters from any other anthology. We kick off with Caedmon's hymn and various other poems by Anon covering the Saxon and Celtic traditions. Chaucer follows and we're barely through the first quarter of the book before we're past the Tudors and into the Jacobeans. The pace slows as we travel further and we get a wider range of voices. Women feature prominently and Irish, Scottish and Welsh poets all feature much more strongly than in the traditional "Poetry in English" anthologies.

The big names are there although, I suppose to avoid duplicating other collections, it is not always their best known (or particularly good poems). None of the 1819 odes from Keats, for instance, but we do get the thoroughly unmemorable A Song About Myself. The final chapter covers poetry written since 2000. Only one poem is allowed per author which gives a good spread although feels as though wheat and chaff haven't been separated. There are many more voices from the immigrant experience. My favourite contemporary poet, Michael Symmons Roberts is not represented. There is a definite feeling of a tailing off of quality.

[emilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant anthology of poems across an enormous variety of styles, subjects, and, of course, time periods. I would have liked to have some additional information about each of the poems and poets - for example, the year of the poem's initial publication or the poet's birth and death years - but the lack of this information did not detract from my enjoyment of this adventure through British and Irish poetry. My copy now has many pages marked for future reference and it's a book I will continue to pick up again and again for years to come.

[Johnpm · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a dreadful anthology

I bought the kindle format, whatever way the algorithm works each line of ANY poem starts with a capital letter, this throws my rhythm when reading the poem as my mind thinks it's a start to a new sentence. This angers me as I would have expected a better standard of quality from a British Poet Laureate to at least inspect the work. I struggled to half way through and now I am going to ask for my money back. Do not buy this exercise in cashing in.

[Mountainmoth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection spanning over 2000 years of poetry from all sides and standpoints. Loved it!

[Nicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of poems: ancient, modern, variety of themes and poets.

[Sabrina]

I'm gonna be slowly working my way through this gigantic book for the rest of the year - it's one of those books that you can just turn to any page and read a bit here and there. I'm really impressed by the selections and how BIG it is - 700 pages of selected poems!