"'Carol Ann Duffy is considered a top poet. But she deserves better. She deserves to outsell most of the novelists on your shelf ' Observer
The effortless virtuosity, directness, drama and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy’s verse have made her our most admired and best-loved contemporary poet.
Sincerity is Duffy’s final collection of poems as Poet Laureate, and the much-anticipated successor to the Costa Award-winning The Bees. Time and its passage are at the heart of this reflective work, which gazes out from the autumn of life. There are moving elegies here for what has departed; whether that be children who have flown the nest, a way of life, literary luminaries, past loves, lost parents or our own youth. As Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, she finds moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life.
This collection finds a poet at the height of her powers using her full poetic range, casting her eye both inwards, in poems of a deeply personal nature, and yet also outwards, taking stock of a world in turmoil. In some of her most radical work yet, we see Duffy satirise and unpick the deception and dishonesty at the heart of our current political situation. A rallying cry builds steadily through the book culminating in a moving closing ode to the virtue of sincerity.
A fitting culmination to her time as a Poet Laureate, this collection, at once intimate and public, is a work of great power from one of our most cherished and humane poets."
"In her prize-winning fourth collection, Mean Time, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, finding moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life. These are powerful poems of loss, betrayal and desire."
"‘Swooningly glorious’ The Times
‘Indisputably her best volume’ Sunday Times
The Bees is Carol Ann Duffy’s first collection of poems as Poet Laureate. In it she uses her full poetic range: there are drinking songs, love poems, poems of political anger; there are elegies, too, for beloved friends, and – most movingly – the poet’s own mother.
Woven and weaving through the book is its presiding spirit: the bee. Sometimes the bee is Duffy’s subject, sometimes it strays into the poem, or hovers at its edge. In the end, Duffy’s point is clear: the bee symbolizes what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary for us to protect. The Bees, at once intimate and public, is a work of great power from one of our most cherished poets."
"Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time, and Rapture is essential reading for the broken-hearted of all ages' - Rose Tremain
The effortless virtuosity, directness, drama and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy's verse have made her our most admired and best-loved contemporary poet. Rapture, her seventh collection, is a book-length love-poem, and a moving act of personal testimony; but what sets these poems apart from other treatments of the subject is that Duffy refuses to simplify the contradictions of love, and read its transformations - infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation and grief - as simply redemptive or destructive.
Rapture is a map of real love, in all its churning complexity. Yet in showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives, Duffy has accessed a new level of directness that sacrifices nothing in the way of subtlety of expression. These are poems that will find deep rhymes in the experience of most readers, and nowhere has Duffy more eloquently articulated her belief that poetry should speak for us all."
"This unique collection of poems from the Poet Laureate, filled with her characteristic wit, is a feminist classic and a modern take on age-old mythology.
Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je t'adore.
Behind every famous man is a great woman – and from the quick-tongued Mrs Darwin to the lascivious Frau Freud, from the adoring Queen Kong to the long-suffering wife of the Devil himself, each one steps from her counterpart's shadow to tell her side of the story in this irresistible collection.
Original, subversive, full of imagination and quicksilver wit, The World's Wife is Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy at her beguiling best."
"It is Christmas Eve, 1799, and Dorothy Wordsworth is awake in the dead of night. She stands outside in the winter cold, waiting patiently.
When the new day breaks it will bring family and friends to Dorothy's door. For tomorrow is a double joy: tomorrow is her Christmas Birthday.
Carol Ann Duffy's wonderful poem Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday takes us to the frozen landscape of the Lake District, where a merry celebration is about to begin in the Wordsworths' cottage.
Gorgeously illustrated by Tom Duxbury, this festive poem evokes the snowy Lake District as Dorothy celebrates her birthday with her brother William Wordsworth and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
"Bethlehem is normally a quiet little town on the edge of the desert. But tonight, as dusk falls, there is a sense of something special in the air.
An inn packed with revellers, shepherds sprawled on the grass, animals in their stables: everything will be changed when a bright star bearing news arrives in the sky.
Carol Ann Duffy's evocative poem will transport you to Bethlehem, capturing the sights, the sounds and the atmosphere of this ancient and magical place.
Presented as a beautiful small hardback, with illustrations by Alice Stevenson, Bethlehem by Carol Ann Duffy is a Christmas gift to treasure."
"Beginning with the King's Cook, who is preparing a sumptuous Christmas Pie, Wenceslas takes us to a medieval feast. The lords and ladies are at their places, the wine is in full flow, the musicians are playing in the gallery and the entertainment has begun. All should be perfect. But when the good King looks up from his table he sees something more than just snow, falling deep and crisp and even . . .
Richly illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic, this gorgeous little book captures the age-old magic of Christmas. In reimagining the much-loved carol of King Wenceslas, Carol Ann Duffy's wonderful poem offers merriment and festive cheer, but also celebrates what is truly important at this special time of year: the simple acts of kindness that each of us can show another."
"Down at the Front, on a cold winter's night in 1914, amidst the worst war the world had ever seen, an inexplicable silence spread from man to man. Belief was in the air. Then the soldiers ceased fire and the magic of Christmas took hold . . .
Carol Ann Duffy's brilliant poem celebrates the miraculous truce between the trenches, when enemy shook hands with enemy, shared songs, swapped gifts, even played football, and peace found a place in No Man's Land.
With gorgeous colour illustrations by David Roberts, this special, full size edition of The Christmas Truce is a Christmas gift to treasure."
"It is a cold day in Ireland, the 26th of December; frost lies thick on the blackthorn. A man walks the just-waking village, banging on every door, summoning the boys. Today is St. Stephen's Day, when legend has it that the Saint was betrayed by a wren's call, and the boys are off to the forest where they hope to find the traitorous bird and capture it by nightfall. But what will they do if their prey escapes them?
Inspired by the many myths of the wren and the Irish tradition of hunting it, Carol Ann Duffy's beautiful new Christmas poem takes us on a chase through a snowy, rural landscape and ends with a merry celebration. With gorgeous full-colour illustrations by Dermot Flynn throughout, The Wren-Boys will make a perfect stocking-filler this festive season."
"In a gorgeous pocket-sized hardback, Another Night Before Christmas is Carol Ann Duffy's magical contemporary reworking of the famous poem by Clement C. Moore. Beautifully presented, this wonderful festive poem, illustrated with Rob Ryan's paper cut artwork, is the perfect Christmas gift.
On the night before Christmas,
A child in a house,
As the whole family slept,
Behaved just like a mouse . . .
It's the night before Christmas and a young girl creeps down the stairs, determined to find out for certain whether Santa is real . . . But try as she might, she can't keep awake and is soon fast asleep.
She doesn't stir, even when Santa and his reindeer land on her roof-top - but then, when he bursts out of her fireplace, she wakes to a room filled with magic. As she watches him fly off into the night, she knows that she will never forget this sight because, at Christmas, the best gift of all is belief."
"On a frosty winter evening, the Baron watches the snow fall. He is bored and worried. It will soon be Christmas and everything is too quiet. What can he do to bring excitement to the Manor?
His wife, the Baroness, has an idea: he can appoint a King of Christmas, a peasant to take his place. And so begin twelve days of chaos, anarchy and merriment . . .
Inspired by the medieval tradition of appointing a Lord of Misrule, Carol Ann Duffy's warm and enchanting Christmas poem takes us into a topsy-turvy world of festivity and celebration, where rules no longer apply. With beautiful full-colour illustrations by Lara Hawthorne throughout, The King of Christmas is the perfect gift this festive season."
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