#carol ann duffy

[petaltexturedskies]

Carol Ann Duffy, Pygmalion's Bride

[politedemon]

Eurydice, Carol Ann Duffy // Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, Céline Sciamma // Kaos, Netflix

[apoemaday]

Mrs. Faust

by Carol Ann Duffy

First things first -- I married Faust. We met as students, shacked up, split up, made up, hitched up, got a mortgage on a house, flourished academically, BA. MA. Ph.D. No kids. Two toweled bathrobes. Hers. His. We worked. We saved. We moved again. Fast cars. A boat with sails. A second home in Wales. The latest toys -- computers, mobile phones. Prospered. Moved again. Faust’s face was clever, greedy, slightly mad. I was as bad. I grew to love the lifestyle, not the life. He grew to love the kudos, not the wife. He went to whores. I felt, not jealousy, but chronic irritation. I went to yoga, t’ai chi, Feng Shui, therapy, colonic irrigation. And Faust would boast at dinner parties of the cost of doing deals out East. Then take his lust to Soho in a cab, to say the least, to lay the ghost, get lost, meet panthers, feast. He wanted more. I came home late one winter’s evening, hadn’t eaten. Faust was upstairs in his study, in a meeting. I smelled cigar smoke, hellish, oddly sexy, not allowed. I heard Faust and the other laugh aloud. Next thing, the world, as Faust said, spread its legs. First politics -- Safe seat. MP. Right Hon. KG. 50 Then banks -- offshore, abroad -- and business - Vice-­chairman. Chairman. Owner. Lord. Enough? Encore! Faust was Cardinal, Pope, knew more than God; flew faster than the speed of sound around the globe, lunched; walked on the moon, golfed, holed in one; lit a fat Havana on the sun. Then backed a hunch -- Invested in smart bombs, in harms, Faust dealt in arms. Faust got in deep, got out. Bought farms, cloned sheep, Faust surfed the Internet for like-­minded Bo-­Peep. As for me, I went my own sweet way, saw Rome in a day, spun gold from hay, had a facelift, had my breasts enlarged, my buttocks tightened; went to China, Thailand, Africa, returned, enlightened. Turned 40, celibate, teetotal, vegan, Buddhist, 41. Went blonde, redhead, brunette, went native, ape, berserk, bananas; went on the run, alone; went home. Faust was in. A word, he said, I spent the night being pleasured by a virtual Helen of Troy. Face that launched a thousand ships. I kissed its lips. Things is -- I’ve made a pact with Mephistopheles, the Devil’s boy. He’s on his way to take away what’s owed, reap what I sowed. For all these years of gagging for it, going for it, rolling in it, I’ve sold my soul. At this, I heard a serpent’s hiss, tasted evil, knew its smell, as scaly devil hands poked up right through the terracotta Tuscan tiles at Faust’s bare feet and dragged him, oddly smirking, there and then straight down to Hell. Oh, well. Faust’s will left everything -- the yacht, the several homes, the Lear jet, the helipad, the loot, et cet, et cet, the lot -- to me. C’est la vie. When I got ill, it hurt like hell. I bought a kidney with my credit card, then I got well. I keep Faust’s secret still -- the clever, cunning, callous bastard didn’t have a soul to sell.

[adventuresofalgy]

The north wind was stronger and colder by the following morning, and the sky was considerably cloudier, but from time to time the sunshine reappeared, and when it did manage to break through there was still a wee bit of warmth to be found, providing one stayed close to the ground or discovered some spot which was particularly well sheltered.

Algy had seen the first bumblebees of the year flying around the garden on the previous day, so – knowing that they loved crocuses – he waited patiently for a good sunny interval, then established himself quietly on the ground beside a cluster of open flowers, hoping that a bee would visit before the sun went in again.

And before long Algy heard a most welcome buzzing sound, and a wee furry creature whizzed past his face and began to bumble busily about the golden stamens of one of the crocuses just in front of him. Thrilled, Algy gazed at it happily, and as he watched it investigating the rich crocus stamens, he recalled a recent poem which touched not only on bees but also on the writing of poetry, and perhaps other matters besides…

Here are my bees, brazen, blurs on paper, besotted; buzzwords, dancing their flawless, airy maps. Been deep, my poet bees, in the parts of flowers, in daffodil, thistle, rose, even the golden lotus; so glide, gilded, glad, golden, thus – wise – and know of us: how your scent pervades my shadowed, busy heart, and honey is art.

[Algy is recalling the poem Bees by the contemporary Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy.]

[derangedrhythms]

dreaming you hard, hard,

Carol Ann Duffy, Rapture; from ‘You’ 

[alwaystuesday]

This really is one to click for better quality.

Zooms on image and full poem by Carol Ann Duffy under the cut

Inprnt | kofi

Rain Carol Ann Duffy

Not so hot as this for a hundred years. You were where I was going. I was in tears. I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers.

A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love. You returned on the day I had to leave. I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live.

Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night; got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right, in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light.

I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame, gave it the last of the water, gave it your name. It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme.

Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,

and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head, and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead, and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.

[solar-settings]

from physics, by carol ann duffy // jackie and shauna, yellowjackets

[metamorphesque]

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell.

You, Carol Ann Duffy

[thirteenandahalfcrows]

nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING will get me as riled up as religious symbolism

[hangsawoman]

girlfriends by carol ann duffy

[petaltexturedskies]

I love your name. I pray it into the night till its letters are light.

Carol Ann Duffy, from"Name" in Rapture

[arsanimarum]

[Carol Ann Duffy, Pluto]

[litandlifequotes]

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart.

— Carol Ann Duffy

[apoemaday]

Eurydice

by Carol Ann Duffy

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground.

So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard -- Ye Gods -- a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door.

Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears.

Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc.

In fact girls, I’d rather be dead.

But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal.

Orpheus strutted his stuff.

The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life -- Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife -- to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths…

He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever.

So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked.

Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this -- I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke -- Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again…

He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me.

What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone.

The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

[deadacademic]

[derangedrhythms]

Carol Ann Duffy, Ritual Lighting: Laureate Poems; from 'The Beauty of the Church'