It's wonderfully affectionate and quirky, and becoming part of the frame of the narrative and built into the blocks of stanzas is the marvelous line "Bad words ran in her head like mice. Overall, though, it must be said that Carol Ann Duffy's lyricism flows beautifully across the pages like water and it is a pure joy to read every single line of text.

For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms - but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation. I sat down in the library to read some of the books I'd already chosen, but this one caught my eye and attention somehow, sitting on a shelf just to my right.

Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana, the latter constantly told to “ act like a fucking princess by “the men from the press -/ Give us a smile, cunt.

And though she uses conventional stanza forms she somehow seems to make their blocks disappear so that they all blend smoothly into a delicious current, causing the poems to flow, carrying the alluvial affection for Duffy's subject. Sports is an important consideration, as well as music; both of which there have been male and female seperation. In analyzing these two poems, it begins to look at subject matter, but a large part of what makes Duffy’s poetry important is the formatting and word choice.

The Map-Woman’ is a powerful and thoughtful poem, about the experiences and places mapped upon a body; ‘Beautiful’ holds a few echoes of ‘The Lady of Shallot’; ‘The Diet’ is about a woman who starves herself so much that she ends up shrinking.

there will be poems you connect with, as i did, and there will be poems that you struggle to feel any emotion for despite their high quality, also as i did. Elaine Feinstein's Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet is published by Phoenix, and her Collected Poems and Translations by Carcanet.uk will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing. Part of Duffy's talent - besides her ear for ordinary eloquence, her gorgeous, powerful, throwaway lines, her subtlety - is her ventriloquism. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009.Her writing for children includes Queen Munch and Queen Nibble, The Skipping-Rope Snake and The Tear Thief . I was in awe when I read The Bees, and cheering for girl power when making my way through The World’s Wife. When these two poems are considered together, it allows the reader to begin to connect to the poetry. The use of line breaks and capitalization (or lack of) allows the reader see emphasis on the important ideas of the poem. All of the situations considered in the poem are male dominated, but Duffy wants the reader to realize it is by intentional exclusion that women were not a part of these events.