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Carol Ann Duffy: Feminine Gospels
In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Carol Ann Duffy’s 2002 collection, ‘Feminine Gospels’. After an introductory module in which we think about the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy in general and the collection as a whole – and especially the implications of its title – the course continues with a reading and analysis of each of the twenty-one poems in the collection, one by one.
Introduction
In this module, we provide an introduction to Carol Ann Duffy as a poet and her 2002 collection ‘Feminine Gospels’, focusing in particular on: (i) Duffy’s use of language, and Wordsworth’s comments in the preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (2nd ed. 1800) about ‘fitting to metrical arrangement … the real language of men’; (ii) the extent to which Duffy’s feminine gospels are also feminist gospels; (iii) the idea of gospels as a genre of writing associated with men, and what it means to have feminine gospels; (iv) the position of women in literary fiction; and (v) the importance of Duffy’s position as Poet Laureate, the first woman to hold the position in the history of the institution.
Hello, I'm John McCrae.
00:00:05And today we have the great pleasure of talking about a superstar poet.
00:00:07This is Caroline Duffy
00:00:13and feminine Gospels. Isn't that a great cover?
00:00:15You see how the style of the shoes and the skirts and and even the ankles look sort of?
00:00:18Well, I would call it old fashioned, wouldn't you?
00:00:26It's kind of fifties, early sixties
00:00:29and no coincidence,
00:00:32because a lot of these
00:00:34poems in this collection are about when she was
00:00:37growing up at school and things like that.
00:00:41It's an interesting book from many points of view.
00:00:45It was published quite a while ago, 2002,
00:00:48and it's one of these books.
00:00:53That was a big success at the first publication, and it's kind of kept going
00:00:54for a very simple reason. People find more and more and more in it,
00:01:00and that's one of the great things about Carol Ann.
00:01:05Her poems seem nicely spontaneous and fresh, and the language is nice and simple.
00:01:08She she keeps saying she likes to use simple language, but in complicated ways.
00:01:14Now that's
00:01:19such an old thing about poets.
00:01:21They want to reinvent the English language for their own purposes.
00:01:23Wordsworth and Coleridge said this as long ago
00:01:27as 17 98 1802nd Relation of Lyrical Balance.
00:01:30They wanted to use the ordinary language of men.
00:01:36Well, you can imagine what Carol Ann would see about that
00:01:40to a certain extent. Although she has never explicitly said this,
00:01:43Carol Ann is using in all her poetry,
00:01:47the ordinary language
00:01:52of women
00:01:54as well as men
00:01:55as well as men.
00:01:58She's not one of these exclusively feminist writers.
00:01:59Some of her very, very best works are about meal experience,
00:02:04but feminine gospels. Let's have a look at that as a title.
00:02:10First things first. What it isn't.
00:02:17It is not
00:02:20feminist
00:02:22gospels
00:02:23now be aware of that world feminist.
00:02:25I know it's strange. I'm sitting here, a person of
00:02:28masculine disposition,
00:02:32talking about feminine gospels. But that's what it's all about.
00:02:34It's about discussing, challenging, comparing, contrasting. And I'm quite sure
00:02:39that I will see things today, which are from a meal masculine point of view.
00:02:44And if you are coming from another point of view, any other part of you,
00:02:52you might want to challenge the kind of things I say.
00:02:57Yes,
00:03:02yes, that's what Caroline is all about. She is not writing
00:03:03the kind of feminist stuff, which is to make the sisterhood feel good about itself
00:03:09and
00:03:17slag off men.
00:03:18She doesn't do that. She doesn't slag me off. She
00:03:20skewers them. She sends them up. She burst their arrogance and their pride.
00:03:25Of course she does.
00:03:31She's not in any way a missing throat. She doesn't hate men.
00:03:33She lived with the poet Adrienne Henry for a great part of her young life,
00:03:39and he was very influential on her
00:03:44in many, many ways.
00:03:47She now identifies as gay, and she spent 15 years of her life in a relationship
00:03:49with Jackie Kay, who is now the Scottish poet laureate.
00:03:54Can you imagine that to future poet Laureates in the same house?
00:03:58It's a wonderful idea.
00:04:02I knew them when when they were together at that lovely, lovely, lovely couple.
00:04:03They have kids together,
00:04:08and
00:04:10Caroline is a worldly wise woman who is using women's opportunities,
00:04:12women's language, women's perceptions.
00:04:22Two
00:04:26change the way people read and think about women's experience.
00:04:27And the feminine gospels, therefore, are an answer yes,
00:04:35to all the centuries upon centuries of masculine
00:04:42preaching.
00:04:47But the feminine gospels. There are 21 poems in here.
00:04:50There are four gospels in the Bible.
00:04:54There's no way biblical,
00:04:58but they cover everything every aspect of feminine experience,
00:05:01from prehistory to last week.
00:05:07They are particularly about growing up into being a woman
00:05:12and living
00:05:21as a woman.
00:05:22Yes, there are references to
00:05:25sisterhood. Yes, there are moments when men are taken to task,
00:05:27as they should be.
00:05:33There are moments when women are taken to task as well,
00:05:35because the best female writers people like Fay Weldon,
00:05:39Doris Lessing are not doing the feminist all pro women thing
00:05:44to the exclusion of men.
00:05:50Think of great writers like Angela Carter.
00:05:53Like Jeanette Winterson.
00:05:56They are reshaping the place that women have
00:05:59in the literary perception of female experience.
00:06:05That's what they're doing.
00:06:10These are fun poems. They are serious,
00:06:12they are hilarious,
00:06:18they are real,
00:06:19and they are so real.
00:06:21You will find
00:06:25as I do,
00:06:26and I
00:06:28probably read them a little bit differently. As a man
00:06:29from
00:06:32any of you who are
00:06:33women,
00:06:35you will find that there are moments when
00:06:37something happens, which I like to think of a slippage.
00:06:39The words sort of get slippery,
00:06:44the meaning slips between the lines and you get confused,
00:06:46you get confused about time,
00:06:50about place, about the mythology she might be referring to.
00:06:54You get caught somewhere between the real
00:06:58and the so real
00:07:03look for that happening
00:07:05because she plays with reality and surrealism,
00:07:07and that's a joy.
00:07:12And that means that time and again you can't actually explain something.
00:07:15You just kind of cherish it.
00:07:21You enjoy it.
00:07:24You point up if you have to, the ambiguity
00:07:26and you smile at the cleverness because she is very, very clever with words,
00:07:31with feelings with emotions.
00:07:38She's fun to read.
00:07:40She's puzzling to read.
00:07:43She's not going to give you lots of answers.
00:07:46The best poets don't give you answers.
00:07:49They open up questions
00:07:52they meet. You see things in a slightly different way,
00:07:54and I reckon that's positive.
00:07:58As a man, I get a lot from the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy.
00:08:01She's one of the two or three poets, like perhaps Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin.
00:08:06I get most from
00:08:11of the poets who have recently
00:08:13made their name.
00:08:16She became poet laureate in 2009
00:08:19and held the job for 10 years, which is how that
00:08:22role now works.
00:08:24She was the first woman
00:08:27to hold that job,
00:08:29which is astonishing.
00:08:31She was the first Scott
00:08:33to hold that job,
00:08:35and, as I said, her former partner, Jackie Key, is now the Scots.
00:08:37Makkah, or the poet laureate of Scotland,
00:08:42deserved recognition and a probation
00:08:45for two of the finest female writers
00:08:49of our time.
00:08:52
Cite this Lecture
APA style
McRae, J. (2019, December 06). Carol Ann Duffy: Feminine Gospels - Introduction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/carol-ann-duffy-feminine-gospels/work-45721c7e-4dbc-4d2e-8eff-3143ef2b7f85
MLA style
McRae, J. "Carol Ann Duffy: Feminine Gospels – Introduction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 06 Dec 2019, https://massolit.io/courses/carol-ann-duffy-feminine-gospels/work-45721c7e-4dbc-4d2e-8eff-3143ef2b7f85