N7 Poetry Study

1. N7 Poetry Study A Trio of British Poets

2. Carol Ann Duffy 23Dec 1955 - present Seamus Heaney 13 Apr 1939 - 30 Aug 2013 Ted Hughes 17 Aug 1930 - 28 Oct 1998

3. Carol Ann Duffy

4. Biographical Details Scottish, Irish and English connections Eldest child and had four brothers Raised Catholic – Catholic schooling Encouraged to write poetry at age 10 – fascination with power of language Studied Philosophy at Liverpool University Middle-class background – father local councillor Relationship with Jackie Kay – ended 2004 Daughter – Ella – born 1995

5. Career Manchester – Taught Creative Writing at Metropolitan University Freelance writer in London Won National Poetry competition 1983 May 2009 became UK’s 20th Poet Laureate – 1st female Awarded an OBE 1995 and CBE 2002 One of the most significant names in contemporary British poetry and is regarded as one of Britain’s most well-loved & successful poets

6. Appeal • Accessibility: Appeals to those who wouldn’t normally read poetry • Appears on National Curriculum (Canon in England & Scottish Text List in Scotland) • Achieved both critical & commercial success • Has been accused of being too populist • Work is highly acclaimed • Work is both literary and accessible • relatable themes and experiences

7. Carol Ann Duffy on Duffy “I’m not interested, as a poet, in words like ‘plash’ – Seamus Heaney words, interesting words. I like to use simple words in a complicated way.” “I don’t mind being called a feminist poet, but I wouldn’t mind if I wasn’t. I think the concerns of art go beyond that. I think as long as the work is read it doesn’t really matter what the cover is. I have never in my life sat down and thought ‘I will write a feminist poem.’” Carol Ann Duffy, interview with Andrew McAllister, Bete Noire 6 (Winter, 1988), p.71 “Poetry and prayer are very similar. I write quite a lot of sonnets and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.”

8. Critics on Duffy “Duffy’s poems are at once accessible and brilliantly idiosyncratic and subtle.” An Observer reviewer celebrating Duffy’s popularity and technical adroitness “The range of Duffy’s poetry is wide. She is able to engage with important philosophical concerns, write with acute wit and humour, and respond sympathetically to the isolated and oppressed members of society. Hers is a poetry rooted in common experience, but its accessibility belies its complexity and richly allusive nature.”

9. Influences • Exploration of way in which meaning and reality are constructed through language has led to her work being linked to postmodernism and poststructuralism (thematic influence rather than stylistic – as her style is conservative not experimental) • Use of demotic, everyday language can be traced back to Wordsworth • Interest in Dramatic Monologue links her to Browning & Eliot • Nostalgia & dry humour = Philip Larkin • Elements of surrealism = Dylan Thomas • Links also with the Beat poets and Liverpool poets

10. Collections The Other Country Selling Manhattan Mean Time

11. Selling Manhattan - 1987 • Concern for way selfish pursuits of Western World (colonising forces) swamp and efface culture • Manhattan Island – now favoured place to live for successful writers etc. – originally dwelling place for Native Americans • Dutch Settler – Peter Minuit – bought from Indians in 1626 • Criticises Capitalist attitude to economics • Response to British political climate of 1980s

12. Selling Manhattan - 1987 • Tory article of faith that wealth was morally good and ‘profit is not a dirty word’ • No objection to healthy economy – questioned increasing gap between rich and poor • Politics and power major themes • DM form – giving voice

13. The Other Country - 1990 • Hamlet’s words concerning death ‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns’ – Confronting death • Platonic, sexual or romantic love as another country examined • Another person’s otherness can make them seem like an unexplored country • Title offers plurality of meanings – Duffy primarily concerned with such potential in language – readers not led to seek single, reductive ‘answer’ while interpreting

14. The Other Country - 1990 • More overtly concerned with politics of Britain – addresses Thatcher years • Articulates anger & frustration at transformation of Britain into something unrecognisable • Leads us to reflect on geographical differences between countries & effects they have – language, difference & distance • L.P. Hartley ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ – land of childhood & memory

15. The Other Country - 1990 • Hamlet’s words concerning death ‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns’ – Confronting death • Platonic, sexual or romantic love as another country examined • Another person’s otherness can make them seem like an unexplored country • Title offers plurality of meanings – Duffy primarily concerned with such potential in language – readers not led to seek single, reductive ‘answer’ while interpreting

16. Mean Time - 1993 • Bleakest collection – atmosphere of gloom • Focus on effects of damaged or irreconcilable relationships • Political climate and personal contexts investigated gives little room for optimism • Memory often offers temporary respite from harsh realities that are faced in present – but even these not always helpful

17. Mean Time - 1993 • Time can be ‘mean’ in the sense that it is malevolent – negative personification of time • Doing something in ‘the mean time’ – waiting for something more significant to happen • ‘Mean’ = average – Time averages out our experience & reduces us to brief interruption in world • Greenwich Mean Time – precise measurement – unable to escape tyranny of time • Losing time with changing of clocks – cannot utter anything which does not make reference to time – verbs past, present and future

18. Seamus Heaney

19. Biographical Details Eldest of nine children – tragic death of 4 year old brother, Christopher when he was 14 Born April 1939 – Farm near Castledawson, Northern Ireland Catholic family with farming background (father’s side) Grew up on small 50 acre farm in County Derry – cattle-dealing Mother – connections with more modern world – linen mill Parentage – mix of traditional rural Ireland (Gaelic) and Ulster of Industrial Revolution

20. Career 1957 scholarship at Queen’s university in Belfast – 1st class honours in English Language & Literature Secondary education – boarder at St Columb’s College, Londenderry Exposed to a variety of literature – love of language Much of poetry arises out of "quarrel with himself" – background tensions & inner tension between silence & speech Mid-1960s – poetry came to public attention. Nobel Prize for literature 1995 Lectured in various universities - Belfast

21. Style & Major Concerns • Draws inspiration from early & lifelong influences • Movements away from his birthplace more geographical than psychological: rural County Derry is the "country of the mind" where much of Heaney's poetry is still grounded. • Land-Language-Heritage triangle – focus of Heaney’s brilliance • Poetry concerned with influences of Ireland or literary memorials to people encountered • Reflections on childhhod give way to darker commentaries on social & political problems in N. Ireland • Influenced by Catholic standpoint – surrounded by predominantly Protestant area – 1969 in Belfast at outbreak of ‘The Troubles’ • Made explicit his desire not to be called a ‘British Poet’

22. Seamus Heaney on Heaney "Be advised! My passport's green. / No glass of ours was ever raised! To toast The Queen". In a lecture in 1995 Heaney explained that he wrote about the color of the passport "to maintain the right to diversity within the border". "Each person is on Earth to make sense of themselves and for themselves and to bring the inchoateness of this self into an expressible state," he reflects. "These are the essential and redemptive steps of poetry." Heaney has said that poetry is “restoration of the culture to itself” and has referred to poems as “elements of continuity, with the aura and authenticity of archaeological finds, where the buried shard has am importance that is not diminished by the importance of the buried city; poetry as a dig, a dig for finds that end up being plants”.  (Preoccupations p.41) “poetry involves a conscious savouring of words” (Preoccupations p.46).

23. Critics on Heaney "His poetry shows a powerful devotion to the earth, particularly to the landscape and soil of his native Northern Ireland. But Heaney is equally dedicated to language." (Gilbert, 2000) "Heaney writes as a commentator, not as a participant" (English Teachers' Association, 1992) "Only the most gifted poets can start from their peculiar origin in a language, a landscape, a nation, and from these enclosures rise to impersonal authority. Seamus Heaney has this kind of power, and it appears constantly...Nationality becomes landscape; landscape becomes language; language becomes genius." (Ehrenpreis, 1981) He won The Nobel Prize in Literature 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past"

24. Collections Death of a Naturalist (1966) North (1975)

25. Death of a Naturalist (1966) • Draws heavily on Heaney’s rural upbringing • Reflects on childhood experiences and formulation of adult identities – link to past & roots/loss of innocence/finding own path • Considers family relationships and rural life • Reflects Heaney’s own career path – movement away from traditional rural heritage (working of land) to academic writing career • Time and history – cyclical nature of both

26. Death of a Naturalist (1966) • "Heaney's writing is full of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing.” (Gilbert, 2000) • "This was the first place where I felt I had done more than make an arrangement of words: I felt I had let down a shaft into real life." (Heaney, 1980 – in reference to ‘Digging’) • "A poem dense with the mucky thickness that is often the trademark of a Heaney poem...reading Heaney is like trudging through clay." (MacBeth, 1979 – in reference to ‘Death of a Naturalist)

27. North (1975) • Explores both the Irish Troubles & the human experience (political situation in N. Ireland) • Makes connection between mythical & logical and past & present • Link that the land can have to the past, present and future • Darker work: themes of revenge, punishment, conflict, violence • Represents problems of the past in order to explore present issues & contemporary conflicts – own powerlessness against ancient, violent forces • Central symbol of the bog introduced - wide unfenced country, that reaches back millions of years. The bog is the starting point for the exploration of the past, and in several works Heaney has returned to the "bog people", bodies preserved in the soil of Denmark and Ireland.

28. North (1975) • "On his seeing some of the photographs [of the bog people]...Heaney's imagination was stirred. The bog which had been a part of the poet's childhood world now acquired a new significance." (Maguire, 1986) • In 'Punishment' Heaney "sees in the corpse of a ritually sacrificed woman an echo of the Catholic women in Northern Ireland who are tarred and chained to their front porches for dating British soldiers." (Pellegrino, 2003) • 'The Irish Troubles' are a subject he touches on briefly, again trying to convey subtle political commentary with his pen. "Violence, human as well as natural is a significant issue in many of the poems." (English Teachers' Association, 1992)