Related Research Articles
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly gay poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales.
Jacqueline Margaret Kay,, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
"Havisham" is a poem written in 1993 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Charles Dickens' character Miss Havisham from his novel Great Expectations, looking at Havisham's mental and physical state many decades after being left standing at the altar, when the bride-to-be is in her old age. It expresses Havisham's anger at her fiancé and her bitter rage over wedding-day trauma and jilted abandonment. Duffy's use of language is very powerful and passionate. Throughout the poem oxymorons and juxtaposition such as "Beloved sweetheart bastard" and "Love's hate" portrays the ambivalence and restless uncertainty of the character, while a sexual fantasy reveals both the unrequited love and the passion that remains within Havisham following the wedding, a devastation from which her heart has never recovered.
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020.
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG).
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
John Agard FRSL is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2021.
"Half-Caste" is a poem by John Agard that looks at people's ideas and usage of the term "half-caste". The poem is included within Agard's 2005 collection of the same name, in which he explores a range of issues affecting black and mixed-race identity in the UK. The poem is written in the first-person. Agard uses phonetic spelling throughout the poem, in order to create the voice of the speaker. It was included in the AQA Anthology., and is currently included in the Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9–1) English Literature Poetry Anthology. A snippet of Agard reading the poem is included in British rapper Loyle Carner’s 2022 single Georgetown, referencing his own mixed-race identity.
Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! – a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We Have Come Through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" – was published by Faber in February 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK, and often employ language that imitates the English spoken by Indian immigrants whose first language is Punjabi, which some have termed "Punglish". He currently works part-time at JFS School in Kenton and visits schools, universities and festivals where he performs his work. He was appointed chair of the Royal Society of Literature in November 2020.
The World's Wife is a collection of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, originally published in the UK in 1999 by both Picador and Anvil Press Poetry and later published in the United States by Faber and Faber in 2000.
"Education for Leisure" is a poem by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy which explores the mind of a person who is planning to commit a murder. Until 2008 the poem was studied at GCSE level in England and Wales as part of the AQA Anthology, a collection of poems by modern poets such as Duffy and Seamus Heaney.
"What Were They Like?" is a poem by Denise Levertov written as a protest against the Vietnam War, envisaging a future where the "genocide" that the American bombing campaign began has been completed, and nothing is known of Vietnam or its culture. Major themes within the poem include: war, culture and anger. It is included in the AQA, OCR and Edexcel anthologies that English students study for GCSE.
"Search for My Tongue" is a poem by Sujata Bhatt. The poem is studied in England as part of the AQA Anthology.
"Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes" is a poem by American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Up until 2010, the poem was studied by English school children as part of the GCSE AQA Anthology.
Poetry Live is a series of annual events in venues across the UK where poets perform their poetry for school children studying GCSE level English Literature.
"The Little Red Cap" is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy published by Picador as a part of her 1999 collection of poetry titled The World's Wife. The book consists of poems that are based on old stories and tales in which she reshapes in terms of modern day culture. Duffy is known for her trait to take previous stories, tales, etc. and change them into her own "What you can do as a poet is take on a story and make it new" she once said to Barry Wood in an interview. Duffy's Little Red Cap is a great model of her style of poetry in the collection. The World's Wife was created based on stories of heroes that were an inspiration to her. Duffy also believed that these tales and stories did not interpret the truth. Duffy's belief in feminist literary criticism is apparent as she believed that in order to find the truth, the female character was to be dominant. Most of Duffy's poetry has feminist interest. She found that the original Little Red Cap fairy tale was an example of feminism in both fairy tales and English literature. She then found a personal connection within the original story line to help form a dominant female character in her writing.
Elizabeth Lefroy is a British poet.
References
- ↑ "Carol Ann Duffy - poems". Teachit.co.uk. 1955-12-23. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
- ↑ Brone, Geert. Cognitive Poetics, p. 34.
- ↑ Gill, Jo. Women's Poetry, p. 189.
- ↑ Andrew Moore (1955-12-23). "Carol Ann Duffy-AQA Anthology for GCSE". Teachit.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2009-03-05. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
- ↑ "Carol Ann Duffy - poems". Teachit.co.uk. 1955-12-23. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
- ↑ Childs, Tony. "AS English Literature for AQA A", p. 175.
- ↑ New Rickstones Academy, Academy News Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine
