MILLY: Um, I was just going to say that obviously this journal is going to be edited by BA and MA students in Creative Writing. Is there anything that you’d kind of like touch on in terms of like, what’s the most important, kind of, almost philosophy to have going into a career of writing, or you said earlier that you don’t really think of it as a career being a poet, but like when you kind of—

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - Poem Analysis

What is Duffy trying to say? One way to interpret ‘The Love Poem’ and its use of previous poets’ words is to say that the affair being described in the poem – and in the whole of Rapture – is over (as the final poem in the volume, simply called ‘Over’, will make clear). Duffy’s reference to ‘an epitaph’ in ‘The Love Poem’ hints at this: she is trying to memorialise or enshrine her love affair in words that will last, like those of the poets she quotes. (The opening words of the poem, ‘Till love exhausts itself’, also hints at the end of the affair.) CAROL: My poems are going to come out of my life if they’re autobiographical; they’re going to come out of my imagination if I’m making up new myths or tall tales . . . When we write, in my case, poetry, you write with all of yourself.

These poems are almost old-fashioned in their commitment to rhyme, assonance and metre. In several poems there is a fairytale vocabulary, and ballad forms appear in "Betrothal" and in "Give": MILLY: Yeah, so obviously you’ve just finished your tenure as the Poet Laureate, um, and alongside being the first female Poet Laureate, you’re also the first openly gay Poet Laureate for Britain. With this, did you find it was hard to balance the idea of being vocal about women’s rights and gay rights and being, like, an activist or would you say that some of your poetry is an act of activism, perhaps? CAROL: Well, I don’t think . . . that it’s important that everyone writes. I think it’s important that everyone reads from a young age and then some of those readers will want to become writers. I think that it’s an enriching and civilising and very human part of life to be able to sing, to be able to paint, to play an instrument, to have a go at writing a poem, to read, to go to the theatre, and we’re very much in danger of those things in education withering on the vine or not being properly invested in. I’m not kind of saying that everyone has to write and be a poet, but I am saying that everyone should read poetry and hear poetry and have it as part of lives and some of those will want to grow up and be writers.

Rapture, By Carol Ann Duffy | The Independent | The Independent Rapture, By Carol Ann Duffy | The Independent | The Independent

The poem is a traditional sonnet comprising fourteen lines, and following loosely an ABAB CDCD EFEFGG rhyming pattern. It also follows the metrical rhythm usually associated with sonnets, iambic pentameter, that is five metrical feet or iambs per line, where a iamb is one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable. CAROL: Yeah, I don’t really know . . . I suppose I don’t think of being a poet in terms of having a career. So for me, every new piece of work or new poem I start is what’s exciting and interesting about being, um, a poet and . . . one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in that writing life is writing poetry for children, which I didn’t do until my daughter was born, because I only wrote for adults. She’s twenty-three now, and when she was around two or three, I suddenly found that I wanted to write poems to share with her, for her, so that was the most surprisingly and lovely thing that happened to me as a poet, writing for children. POEM ANALYSIS FROM RAPTURE COLLECTION (Carol Ann Duffy) - Document in A Level and IB English Literature Before we proceed any further with an analysis of ‘The Love Poem’, here are the sources for the poems which Duffy quotes from. The first quotation, ‘my mistress’ eyes’, is from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, which begins ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’; ‘let me count the ways’ is from another love poem, Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (‘ How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’); ‘come live with me’ appears in a number of Renaissance love poems, including Christopher Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ and ‘The Bait’ by John Donne.The main themes of Rapture are love, loss, loneliness, gender issues, and death. [ citation needed] Reception [ edit ]

Carol Ann Duffy - Poet - Scottish Poetry Library Carol Ann Duffy - Poet - Scottish Poetry Library

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’). Reynolds, Margaret (7 January 2006). "Review: Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 19 July 2019.CAROL: (Long pause) Well again, it’s interesting when people ask you questions because the question comes from the way the questioner thinks. British Council complies with data protection law in the UK and laws in other countries that meet internationally accepted standards.

Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - The Rumpus Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - The Rumpus

CAROL: Yes, when you’re writing a poem you’re solving the problem of writing a poem, so it’s the poet and the piece of paper and the language and what happens in that event in language when you’re writing. There isn’t really the sense of anything other than that when I’m writing. 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. RORY: What kind of terms do you think in then? What’s the most important thing when you’re writing? CAROL: So, you’re thinking in terms of legacy, but I don’t think in those terms, so, I would have to say the idea of legacy has occurred to me. a b Duffy, Carol Ann (2005). Rapture: poems. Recorded Books, Inc. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p.6. ISBN 9781466895867. OCLC 966079995.

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RORY: So the consequences are very much a secondary part then of what you want to write? You write something, you’re like ‘okay, this expresses what I believe, I’m going to put this out into the world,’ what the consequences are of that, what people interpret that as, that’s not what I’m thinking of, it's more about what I want to write, rather than what effect it could have. Logan, William (11 April 2013). "Heart's Desire". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 24 June 2019.