Feminine Gospels

by Carol Ann Duffy

Overview

In Feminine Gospels, Carol Ann Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions – and revisions – of female identity. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect – as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, fairytale royals or girls-next-door.

‘Part of Duffy’s talent – besides her ear for ordinary eloquence, her gorgeous, powerful, throwaway lines, her subtlety – is her ventriloquism . . . From verbal nuances to mind-expanding imaginative leaps, her words seem freshly plucked from the minds of non-poets – that is, she makes it look easy’ Charlotte Mendelson, Observer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781447206897
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan
Publication date:	12/13/2012
Series:	Picador Collection , #114
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	981 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester, where she is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has written for both children and adults, and 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 was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009. In 2011 The Bees won the Costa Poetry Award, and in 2012 she won the PEN Pinter Prize. She was made a DBE in the 2015 New Year Honours list.
Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester, where she is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. 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 was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019. Her many 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. In 2021, she was awarded the international lifetime achievement award the Golden Wreath for her achievements in poetry.

Editorial Reviews

In preaching Feminine Gospels, Manchester, U.K.-based poet Carol Ann Duffy creates speakers to articulate "The Diet," "The Woman Who Shopped," "The Laughter of Swofford Girls High" and a woman "dreaming/ till the stars are blue in the face/ printing the news of their old light." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

British poet Duffy revisits queens and school girls, dieting, shopping, and work in closely observed miniatures that have nothing to do with agenda. A real find. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

One of Britain's premiere poets here does what she does best, joining wild, surrealistic imagery and pointillist detail to create sharply realized, visionary poems . . . Duffy never settles for mere cleverness. Her poetic technique is sure and subtle.” —Patricia Monaghan, Booklist

“Carol Ann Duffy is at once lyrical and subversive, delightful and dangerous. No other poet I know occupies a place between such apparent contradictions.” —Billy Collins, Poet Laureate

“[Duffy writes] with lyric intensity . . . She moves through the lives she invents with a kind of casual confidence.” —Elaine Feinstein, The Guardian (London)

“Beautiful . . . Feminine Gospels shows its author still exploring, testing her imaginative powers and masterly way with language.” —Lesley Duncan, The Herald (Glasgow)

“[Carol Ann Duffy's] work has a kind of muscular, lyrical intensity, yet is always rooted in the muck and mulch of real experience.” —Adam Newey, New Statesman

From the Publisher