Armistice

by Carol Ann Duffy

The Armistice of 1918 brought ceasefire to the war on the Western Front, but ‘the Great War’ would not as hoped be ‘the war to end all wars’. In this affecting selection, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, guides us deep into the act and root of ‘armistice’: its stoppage or ‘stand’ of arms, its search for truce and ceasefire. In 100 poems, our most cherished poets of the Great War speak alongside those from other conflicts and cultures, so that we hear some of the lesser-heard voices of war, including wives, families, those left behind. These poems of war and peace memorialise the horror and the tragedy of conflict. At the same time, in armistice, they become a record of renewal and a testimony to hope.

Genres: Poetry, War, World War I

184 pages, Hardcover

Published March 5, 2019

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

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good collection of poetry by a variety of poets on military and conflicts. Emotional and heart-breaking at times.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb collection. The cover describes it as a Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace and I very much enjoyed Carol Ann Duffy's selection of a hundred poems. I first heard some of the commissioned works as they were broadcast on Radio 4 on the 100th anniversary of Armistice in the First World War and they are very good. What makes this book particularly special is that it includes some of the best known and loved poems in the English language so that you come upon them anew, with a gasp. I almost don't want to say what they are without a spoiler alert. There are too poems in translation: I found Seiichi Niikuni's few characters particularly hit the spot.

There's a brief, good, foreword by the editor. I sometimes wanted to know more but have reflected since that I can go away and research myself, that the poetry was best left as it was to speak for itself.

[Daria-Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
And lighting and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

[Zainab · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous collection of poems - truly mesmerising and a treasure of a book.

[Sw33t_heart89 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems, not just concerning international war and its cessation but also the more personal or individual side of conflict and what it takes to get us through it. Needless to say there are a few which see any kind of armistice as something only temporary in nature. Favorites include Jo Shapcott's Phrase Book, Sheiichi Niikuni's Anti-War and Zaffar Kunial's Poppy, but there are many other great poems selected for this book.

[diego ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

every poem was unique