Oh I DO like Carol Ann Duffy's new poem very much indeed

[FrannyandZooey]

Politics

I am so pleased she has started with such a forceful and very enjoyable poem

I can't remember the last time I read anything so satisfyingly CROSS

[FrannyandZooey]

[MarshaBrady]

Very good. Things used to make me cross pre-DC, nice to be reminded of that feeling and energy.

[Pan]

imagining it read in a nice broad glaswegian gutteral accent, just to enhance the

have some of Duffy's previous - wife of the world really good.

and...poly - many. tics - blood-sucking parasites.

[Tn0g]

First piece of poetry from any poet laureate that I actually like.

love the hiss hiss hiss and piss

wonderful.

[potatofactory]

LOVE Carol Ann Duffy. Unflinching as usual!

[OlympedeGouges]

she's bloody great, isn't she. Thanks for that Franny.

[wotulookinat]

Like it I am a fan too.

[Leda]

It's wonderful!

[brimfull]

I would love to hear her saying it.

[BabyJaguar]

oi ggirl
email

[FrannyandZooey]

evening bump

[pointydog]

yes, I like the poem

[janeite]

Excellent.

She reads her work very badly though I think (sounds bored and miserable, rather than empassioned and emotional), so would rather read it myself than hear her do it!

[pointydog]

I have read one of Duffy's books. Can't remember what it was called, might have been short stories. But I really didn't like it.

Thi spoem, however, I like.

[norkmaiden]

Top poem.

(Am a little ambivalent about her work - didn't like Rapture at all, but some of her other work is really, really ace imo)

[Guadalupe]

I like some of her work. The World's Wife was fun. I prefer the beginning of this poem, the end makes me go a bit cross-eyed.

[potatofactory]

I wasn't keen on Rapture either, and I find her children's poetry strangely irritating, but 'Mean Time' is amazing.

[janeite]

My favourite

[Heated]

Re 'Anne Hathaway' always wondered if Duffy & Nye, who wrote Mrs Shakespeare, read each other's work.

[janeite]

Don't know of Nye.

[Deathworm]

Great poem. I am so pleased that she is Laureate.

[Heated]

Mrs Shakespeare received love it/hate it reviews, since the content is coarsely explicit and the style meant to be in the uneducated voice of Anne Hathaway, but scholarly Shakespeare in-jokes abound. Duffy and Nye both write in similar vein about the 2nd best bed & the Shakespeares' marriage.

Personally I think Duffy's riposte to the idiot Lutterworth exam invigilator, Schofield, whose complaint to the exam board, got the marvellous Education For Leisure removed from the syllabus, is brilliant:

Mrs Schofield's GCSE
You must prepare your bosom for his knife,

said Portia to Antonio in which

of Shakespeare's Comedies? Who killed his wife,

insane with jealousy? And which Scots witch

knew Something wicked this way comes? Who said

Is this a dagger which I see? Which Tragedy?

Whose blade was drawn which led to Tybalt's death?

To whom did dying Caesar say Et tu? And why?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark - do you

know what this means? Explain how poetry

pursues the human like the smitten moon

above the weeping, laughing earth; how we

make prayers of it. Nothing will come of nothing:

speak again. Said by which King? You may begin.


Having singularly failed to get the entire point about the poem she complained about (thank god, thousands of more intellligent GCSE students did), do you know what Mrs Schofield's response to this was? "It's a bit weird"

[janeite]

Bloody Mrs Schofield!!! She has stopped my Year 10s from being able to write about their favourite poem in the anthology. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.