Rapture

(Paperback)

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'Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time, and Rapture is essential reading for the broken-hearted of all ages' - Rose Tremain The effortless virtuosity, directness, drama and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy's verse have made her our most admired and best-loved contemporary poet. Rapture, her seventh collection, is a book-length love-poem, and a moving act of personal testimony; but what sets these poems apart from other treatments of the subject is that Duffy refuses to simplify the contradictions of love, and read its transformations - infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation and grief - as simply redemptive or destructive. Rapture is a map of real love, in all its churning complexity. Yet in showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives, Duffy has accessed a new level of directness that sacrifices nothing in the way of subtlety of expression. These are poems that will find deep rhymes in the experience of most readers, and nowhere has Duffy more eloquently articulated her belief that poetry should speak for us all. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Reviews

Carol Ann Duffy is considered a top poet. But she deserves better. She deserves to outsell most of the novelists on your shelf * Observer *
One of the most important, and rightly loved, poets of our time * Independent *
It isnt often that I pick up a book of poems and read it straight through like a novel, but that is exactly what happened with Rapture. Read this book if you are in love, out of love or waiting for it to come along -- Daisy Goodwin * Mail on Sunday *
Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time, and Rapture is essential reading for the broken-hearted of all ages -- Rose Tremain, Books of the Year * Guardian *

Author Bio

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.