“No poet, no artist of any art has their meaning alone” T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood. Artists of all kinds use intertextuality to take the original text and transform and reconstruct it to fit into the new interpretation. By connecting two texts...

The following essay will explore the differences and similarities in tonality between the poems “Blessing” by Imtiaz Dharker and “War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy through discussing the language that is uses to create certain images and...

In both Before You Were Mine and Pluto, Duffy uses characters to present different viewpoints of the past and present. In Before You Were Mine, the past is seen to be tangible and physical as the character of the narrator's mother is heavily...

Carol Ann Duffy wrote 'The World's Wife' in order to scrutinize the representation of both men and women, inspired by her strong feminist views -- reconstructing, for example, many of the 'voiceless women' from throughout history. As Duffy...

Duffy’s poems, Adultery and Disgrace, portray the theme of betrayal in a number of different ways. Both show that betrayal is destructive and deadly to relationships, however, different diverse, including sibilance and oxymorons, are used across...

‘Mrs Midas’ is a revisionist version of the King Midas story told from the female perspective: traditionally, this ancient Greek myth was about a man who could turn everything to gold with a touch. This poem explores the sadness Mrs Midas feels...

Queen Herod is taken from Duffy’s The World’s Wife, a collection which inverts gender roles to celebrate female characters and display the injustice of men’s generalizations. This poem inverts the gender roles in the biblical story of the arrival...

For both Christina Rossetti and Carol Ann Duffy, the continuation of love after death is seemingly instigated in part as narrators express their fondness for their partners, without addressing the fear that accompanies death. In "Remember" by...

In both "Before You Were Mine" and "Brothers," Carol Ann Duffy uses descriptions of memory as a means of re-living past family life. Throughout "Before You Were Mine," Duffy writes about her mother, and imagines her life before motherhood. This...

The poet Carol Anne Duffy presents two different attitudes towards religion in her poems “Prayer” and “Confession.” In "Prayer," Duffy contemplates how, in the absence of organised religion, comfort can instead be found in ordinary, prosaic...

Duffy presents gender in the poems Litany and Havisham through society’s views and expectations of women, and the effects it has on them show how being female was harmful to their wellbeing.

Litany creates an example of the ideal, successful...

Carol Ann Duffy’s love poems are often riddled with oxymoronic statements, which affirm the changing nature of love and how it is perceived in different relationships and in different periods of time and life. "Valentine" and "Havisham" are two...

Duffy explores ideas, thoughts and feelings about love in Valentine and Havisham by commenting on societal expectations of the outcomes and portraying love as unstable, dangerous and likely to cause hurt.

Firstly, Duffy explores the expectation of...

“Salome” is a poem taken from Carol Ann Duffy's collection of poems The World's Wife; most of the poems share a common feature: a historically marginalized narrator retelling the story from personal perspective. Salome’s character originally...

In the poem ‘The Map Woman’, Carol Ann Duffy uses the extended metaphor of a map being printed on a woman’s body to explore ideas surrounding hometowns, childhood and nostalgia. This is immediately introduced in the first line where the reader...

Both ‘Before you were mine’ by Carol Anne Duffy and ‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney present the theme of admiration through their poems. As they both capture the parent-child relationship through the child’s perspective showcasing how they each viewed...

Carol Ann Duffy’s poem "In Mrs Tilscher’s Class" expresses the poetic speaker's love for literature in the context of an intriguing personal narrative. Such a passion came from her primary school teacher as Duffy's protagonist grows into adulthood...

Most of us have a clear perception of what fairy tales are, or what we assume them to be. Over the past century, these tales have been burdened with so many clichés, such as evil queens’ curses and damsels-in-distress, that we tend to identify...

Within Remains, Simon Armitage, who is widely known for focusing on physiological health and for creating a documentary of young soldier in the height of the conflict occurring in Afghanistan, presents the theme of suffering through the personal...

Humans inflict suffering on other humans and when events are forgotten, they are repeated. In the poem “Shooting Stars," Carol Ann Duffy tells a shocking story of a female prisoner held by Nazis in a concentration camp around the time of the...

Tim Turnbull’s "Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn" celebrates Grayson Perry – a ceramic artist who stealthily comments on societal injustices and hypocrisies through his art. It, instead of criticizing, glorifies the lives of the group of young...

Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Bees’- through the extended metaphor of a swarm of bees used to represent the process of writing a poem- focuses on the capacity of words to excite and invigorate the reader and author alike. Indeed, poetry is presented as...

In ‘The Crown’, Carol Ann Duffy explores the prestige and catalogue of duties entailed by queenship through an extended description of a crown. Whilst it cannot be denied that monarchy in the poem is presented as deserving of both awe and respect,...

Carol Ann Duffy’s sinister dramatic monologue, Havisham, is a skillful interpretation of one of literature’s most infamous women. Throughout the text, Duffy deals with the idea of conflict – both in Havisham’s relationship with men and with...