Politics

by Carol Ann Duffy

In Politics, Carol Ann Duffy, one of the English language’s best-loved living poets presents from her own archives, in chronological order, her favourites among her poems on the theme of politics and protest, drawing on work written over four decades. Duffy also adds to the selection her poem written for Danny Boyle’s Pages of the Sea memorial for The Great War. It makes for a sequence that is searching, memorializing, healing.

Genres: Poetry

58 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 2, 2023

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

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“C'est la vie.
When I got ill,
it hurt like hell.
I bought a kidney
with my credit card,
then I got well.
I keep Faust's secret still -
the clever, cunning, callous bastard
didn't have a soul to sell.”

When I picked this up I didn’t realise that it was a collection from over the years, but I enjoyed seeing this as a stand alone themed set of pieces. Definitely interested in reading all four of these recently published short books - nature, politics, love and elegies - when they’re delivered with such acerbic, cynical brutality, it sounds like a pretty good life summation, for the good and the bad to me!

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite poets. Beautifully raw.

[Zoë · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last one is incredible

[Sophie Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry ((:

Generally I prefer World’s Wife but Duffy’s style is just as impactful in this collection.

My particular favourite is ‘Deportation’

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m so glad I’ve returned to Duffy post-GCSE English Lit. This is an incredibly powerful selection of political poetry. Makes me feel riled up…

[Moon Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Duffy’s work but this collection is kind of lacklustre. Some are brilliant, others not so much

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

She’s slayed again. Anything anti Tory always goes down well with me ofc. Also bit shout out to Mrs Faust featuring, took me right back to A Level English Lit.

[Craig Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing

[noa 🪲 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
peterloo got me GOOD

[Ralph Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

An underrated collection of straight-for-the-jugular poems; it's as if Duffy dusted off her weapons after leaving the Poet Laureate post. She really wields the knife, here. Only the That Haegen Girl poem with its Reagan/ romance metaphor resembles The World's Wife.