Duffy’s themes include language and the representation of reality; the construction of the self; gender issues; contemporary culture; and many different forms of alienation, oppression and social inequality. She writes in everyday, conversational language, making her poems appear deceptively simple. With this demotic style she creates contemporary versions of traditional poetic forms - she makes frequent use of the dramatic monologue in her exploration of different voices and different identities, and she also uses the sonnet form. Duffy is both serious and humorous, often writing in a mischievous, playful style - in particular, she plays with words as she explores the way in which meaning and reality are constructed through language. In this, her work has been linked to postmodernism and poststructuralism, but this is a thematic influence rather than a stylistic one: consequently, there is an interesting contrast between the postmodern content and the conservative forms.

Carol Ann Duffy is an award-winning Scottish poet who, according to Danette DiMarco in Mosaic,is the poet of “post-post war England: Thatcher’s England.” Duffy is best known for writing love poems that often take the form of monologues. Her verses, as an Economistreviewer described them, are typically “spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world.” Although she knew she was a lesbian since her days at St. Joseph’s convent school, her early love poems give no indication of her homosexuality; the object of love in her verses is someone whose gender is not specified. With her 1993 collection, Mean Time,and 1994’s Selected Poems, she would begin to also write about queer love. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-03-29 00:08:22 Associated-names Roberts, David, 1970- illustrator Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA40833415 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier CA. Duffy, D. Aitkenhead, JK. Rowling, M. Engel, P. Toynbee, et al. C. Brooker, PM. Evans. (2013). The Bedside Guardian 2013. M. Wainwright. Guardian Books. Day One - Mrs Scrooge: a sweet read about the effect one person can have on the world. All the global warming content was a bit sad for a Christmas poem, but it did make me feel all warm and cosy.

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A beautiful collection of Carol Ann Duffy's Christmas poems from the 10 years she was Poet Laurette, exclusively for independent book stores. I read this like an advent calendar over the past 10 days, and here are my thoughts. Duffy’s more disturbing poems also include those such as ‘Education for Leisure’ ( Standing Female Nude) and ‘Psychopath’ ( Selling Manhattan) which are written in the voices of society’s dropouts, outsiders and villains. She gives us insight into such disturbed minds, and into the society that has let them down, without in any way condoning their wrongdoings: ‘Today I am going to kill something. Anything. / I have had enough of being ignored […]’ (‘Education for Leisure’). Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester. She is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she teaches on the Poetry route of the MFA and MA in Creative Writing and is creative director ofcity-wide, national and international literary projects. Her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children's Verse, the Whitbread, Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes, and the Lannan and E. M. Forster Prize in America. She wasPoet Laureate of the United Kingdom 2009-2019. Her collections include Mean Time, Love Poems and The Bees, which won the Costa Poetry Award. Her writing for children includes Queen Munch and Queen Nibble, The Skipping-Rope Snake and The Tear Thief. She was made a DBE in the 2015 New Year Honours list. Words of wisdom Editor) Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace, Faber and Faber (London, England), 2018. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, February, 1994, Betsy Hearne, review of I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists, pp. 184-185; September, 1996, Betsy Hearne, review of Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, pp. 9-10.

The writing is gorgeous, musical, spellbinding. Each poem is illustrated by a different illustrator, which reinforces the impression of stepping into a different universe every time we move from one story to the next. I fell in love with the pictures in the poem Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday, but I have one big regret: I looked everywhere but no illustrator is credited anywhere in the book. That's a shame, and I hope the publisher will remedy to that next time the book goes to print. Independent (London, England) October 2, 1999, Christina Patterson, "Street-wise Heroines at Home," p. WR9. Take My Husband (two-act), first produced in Liverpool, England, at Liverpool Playhouse, December 4, 1982.Day Eight - The King of Christmas: a bored Baron hires a King of 'Misrule' for the 12 days before Christmas. Chaos and ridiculousness follows, but they all have a fun time. There are some incredible illustrations in this, and it is a funny poem! Times Literary Supplement, March 3, 1995, p. 24; July 7, 1995, p. 32; December 3, 1999, Alan Brownjohn, review of The World's Wife, p. 24. However, in 2009, she justified her acceptance of the role on feminist grounds, telling listeners to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, “I think my decision was purely because there has not been a woman. I see this as recognition of the great women poets we now have...and I decided to accept it for that reason.” This is Duffy at her most serious - the poems are rich, beautiful and heart-rending in their exploration of the deepest recesses of human emotion, both joy and pain. These works are also her most formal - following in the tradition of Shakespeare and John Donne, Duffy’s contemporary love poems in this collection draw on the traditional sonnet and ballad forms. The Game: Christmas Day, 1914’. McMillan, Ian. http://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/the-game-christmas-day-1914/