Carol Ann Duffy HELP!

Heya Guys,
I study AS English lit, one of our four texts is Carol Ann Duffy's selected poems. Now I find her poems completely dry and impossible to work with but i have to learn 41 of them. Does anyone out there have any hint, tips or sites to make this ordeal slightly better?
Love steph x

Reply 1

Eru Iluvatar

Alcohol in large quantities!

Reply 2

sweetsteph4eva

Sounds fun, but really isn't going to help :P

Reply 3

vixky!

Ooh we are doing that text for A2.

My teacher said context and looking at Duffy's characteristics are really good ways to get more involved in the poems. So you can look at why she might have written about certain topics, e.g. Recognition may have been written because of Duffy's feminist views on social pressure's on women. and such like. :biggrin:

It helped me anyway! I can relate to things more if I know the reasoning behind it :smile:

Reply 4

Sandhu

Googling each poem works a treat.

Reply 5

Rosey2

How can you find "Havisham," "Anne Hathaway" and "Salomé" dry?? I love those! ( But you're probably not learning those ones now I've said that lol :smile:

)P.S If your teacher ever offers you the chance to go and see her perform them live-DONT GO!! It will only make it ten times worse if you don't like her poems. She was so so BORING, I could hardly understand anything the woman said and she actually made those great poems sound dull and old fashioned.

Reply 6

ferguson82

This comment will probably be useless, and disheartening, but there is no way to spice up Duffy's poems, they are soporiphic, and I agree that to go and see her read them is a complete waste. If I'd had the choice to study them or lick piss off a nettle, I would most certainlyhave opted for the latter.

Reply 7

Jacccckkkkkkk

Hmmm... Well I'm studying 'The World's Wife' for AS and though I find her very talented she's just a man hater. And it's a shame to see her talent go to waste. It infuriates me really. Yeah, just read the poems and hope they will grow on you!

Reply 8

collegedropout

shes not a man hater, she just likes to list the bad qualities of men is all..

Reply 9

knowledge_is_power

im doing this for A2, i found that the york notes helped me a lot. you can get that book and get some more info on each of the poems

Reply 10

Boo_2

On the surface the poems are weird, 'dry' as you say and often seem non-sensical... I studied them last year also for AS-Level.

The key to understanding CAD is to closely analyse every single little word - annotate your book and write down what images are conjured up by the words and phrases and then when you've gone through the entire poem in this way, think about the wider meaning and the message that it might be trying to give out.

The exam board isn't looking for a certain, pre-set interpretation of Duffy's poetry, it wants you to be able to make your own interpretation of it and form you own ideas of the meaning of her poetry. Its alright if you take a completely different stance to other people who are looking at the same poem because the exam board love individuality.

The poem I remember most from Carol Ann Duffy is Mrs Kong... on the surface this poem is just about a big gorilla woman who fell in love with a man who then left her or died (can't remember which) but when you get down beyond the weird, obscure story, the poem is addressing issues about loneliness, love and loss, which are common themes throughout Duffy's poems.

Look for the themes of feminism, sex, love, anger, hatred of men... those were the themes that seemed to me to be the most prominant when I was studying Duffy.

Any specific questions on particular poems or anything else then PM me cos I've still got my book and will probably be able to help you better that way. Try not to worry about it, I was 100% sure I was going to fail the exam and I got 90%, it was only after the exam that I realised how much I did actually understand whereas beforehand I had thought the opposite.

:smile:

Reply 11

s931min

Hi, I quite like your comments with regards to the poems of Carol ann duffy. I'm currently studying CAD selected poems as one of the text in my college, and I'm kind of struggling with it too..
Would you mind if you could offer me more help by....any means, telling me what to do and etc. I'd appreciate greatly..
my hotmail is [email protected]
I look forward to your email and reply. thanks!

Reply 12

Land-based mammal

if your doing the "worlds wife" the themes in that are coming of age, disappointment (mid-life crisis, stifiled wife etc) jealousy, not getting your full due ("elvis's twin sister') etc always analyse the language (archaic, mythical, forceful etc), look for allusions and symbols, layout, form and how you can interpret this to answer your exam question.