Carol Ann Duffy - new poet laureate

[Deleted]

Since Britain has a new poet laureate, time to discover the sort of thing that she writes (especially for us non British people).

Nostalgia

Those early mercenaries, it made them ill -
leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air
to go down, down. What they got
was money, dull crude coins clenched
in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste,
stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds,
the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath -
wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor,
they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them.
It was given a name. Hearing tell of it,
there were those who stayed put, fearful
of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt,
in the heavier air, to hear
the music of home - the sad pipes - summoning,
in the dwindling light of the plains,
a particular place - where maybe you met a girl,
or searched for a yellow ball in long grass,
found it just as your mother called you in.

But the word was out. Some would never
fall in love had they not heard of love.
So the priest stood at the stile with his head
in his hands, crying at the workings of memory
through the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacher
opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late.
It was spring when one returned, with his life
in a sack on his back, to find the same street
with the same sign on the inn, the same bell
chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.

[gyro]

You're really getting into this poetry lark, aren't you ?

[Deleted]

Just don't ask me to actually read it.

[tillystar]

Must admit most of her stuff isn't my cup of tea. I have one I like in a book of various poetry, but I can't find it to share.

Its hard to find her stuff on the www as she is very obsessed with copyright, which is fair enough as its her living but honestly, there is so little out there compared to other poets. I wonder if she wil share now she is Poet Laureate?

Stuffed by Carol Ann Duffy
I put two yellow peepers in an owl.
Wow. I fix the grin of Crocodile.
Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel.
I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.
Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.
Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.
Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.
Splayed. I pierce the heartbeat of a quail.

I like her to be naked and to kneel.
Tame. My motionless, my living doll.
Mute. And afterwards I like her not to tell

[bixaorellana]

Ha ~~ I found that one & it shocked me too much to post it!

I read several on the internet yesterday after reading this OP, and one thing I noticed is that she really can't be typed. Her poems can differ radically from each other.

[gyro]

I wouldn't say posting something you'd never read was a particularly good thing to do.

[BigIain]

There was a picture of her in last weeks Sunday times. She is a man. Really... she looks like Elijah Wood will do in 20 years from now.
I do not like much of any of her stuff I have ever seen and had to double check when I heard she had been made the laureate.

[patricklondon]

Well, her first "official" effort is certainly not avoiding the business of the day:

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/12/politics-carol-ann-duffy-poem

[bixaorellana]

Good poem, although I don't understand the comment on the side claiming it's about MP's expenses specifically, when the title is self-explanatory.

[patricklondon]

Fair point, but the expenses scandal has created a febrile atmosphere in which all parties seem to have accepted that the public at large have rejected "politics as usual", a mood the poem captures.

[bixaorellana]

Well, you would know, of course.

What I like about the poem, though, is that it's applicable to all times and all places, highlighting as it does the corrosion of the spirit in thrall to "politics as usual".