Little Red-Cap

Hello, I'm John McClain. I'm talking today about

the world's wife by the former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

She published this in 1999 and, as you can see from the very first poem,

Little Red Cap, she's taking

poems, stories, real people, myths

and putting the voice

into

a woman's mouth.

So what do you remember about Little Red Riding Hood?

It was the wolf and the grandmother

and what big eyes you have and all that sort of thing.

And she is doing what Angela Carter does.

Also in some of her stories, uh, the bloody chamber, for example,

just re imagining

from the point of view

of

the victim in this case

the woman,

the girl,

the female presence

and all the way through this book, she takes

familiar or historically well known

female characters and gives them a voice that gives us the reader

a new perspective on what these women thought about their men.

And sorry to all the guys listening in

the perceptions of us by these female voices.

I'm not always very positive,

but they're very revealing

their fun.

She faces a lot of what she's doing on classical myths from

largely Roman times of it in particular.

She

covers

a wide range of culture, though

from modern times all the way back,

because you've heard the expression

the world and his wife, meaning everybody?

Well, I'm sorry. The world at that point is male,

and his wife

is an appendage.

That's what she's getting at in the title

and the world's wife.

Let's

ignore the world for a minute.

Let's hear

the wife,

the

feminisation

of some cultural troops.

Little Red Riding Hood is called Little Red Cap.

Childhood's End.

The houses

petered out into playing fields.

The factory allotments kept like mistresses by kneeling married men.

The silent railway line, the Hermits caravan till you came at last

to the edge of the woods.

It was there

that I first clapped eyes on the wolf.

He stood in a clearing, reading his first out loud in his Wolfie drawl,

a paperback in his hairy paw, red wines staining his bearded jaw.

What big ears he had, what big eyes he had

What?

In the end of all, I made quite sure he spotted me. Sweet 16. Never been

made wave.

And about me a drink.

My first

you might ask Quiet.

Here's why.

Poetry.

The rules I knew

would lead me deep into the woods, away from home to a dark, tangled,

thorny place lit by the eyes of owls.

I crawled in his wake, my stockings, it to shreds,

scraps of red from my blazer snagged on twig and branch

murder clues.

I lost both shoes,

but I got there.

Wolf's Lair.

Better everywhere.

There isn't one. That night

breath of the wolf in my ear

was the love poem.

I clung till dawn

to his thrashing, for

for what? Little Girl doesn't dearly love

the hell.

I slid from between his heavy,

matted pause and went in search of a living bird white dove,

which flew straight

from my hands to his open mouth.

One bite

dead.

How nice and breakfast in bed, he said, licking his chops.

As soon as he slept, he crept in the back of the lair,

where a whole wall was crimson gold, a glow

with books,

words. Words were truly alive on the tongue in the head, one beating frantic winged

music

and blood.

But then I was young,

10 years in the woods to tell that a mushroom stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse

that birds are the uttered thoughts of trees

that a greying wolf howls the same old song at the moon.

Year in year out,

season after season.

Same rhyme, same reason.

I took an axe to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon to see how it leapt.

I took an axe to the wolf as he slept. One chop scrolls in the throat

and saw the glistening virgin white of my grandmother's bones.

I filled his old belly with stones.

I stitched him up.

How do the forest I came

with my flowers

singing all alone.

Now that's a pretty deep one, isn't it?

It's playing with what we know

about Little Red Riding Hood and the grandmother.

But it's also in many ways a metaphor for the young poet

who falls in with the older poet

and stays with him and learns from him and then has to leave him

to emerge with her own voice alone.

Now a lot of people want to read this as autobiographical

for Carol Ann,

because when she was young, still at school, you know, to the world blazer

she met

the very famous Liverpool poet Adrienne Mitchell,

went with him, stayed with him for many years,

and she credits him with

teaching her. In many ways,

the craft,

a poetry

and one of the things that she had to learn was to break free from him.

So this wolf represents very many kinds of masculinity.

The attractive masculinity. What little girl doesn't love a wolf,

the growing up and breaking away from the normal life of allotments

and streets

and going into the deep, dark woods leapt out. Woods are always mysterious.

Sometimes they're threatening.

Sometimes they're inspiring

in kids, nursery rhymes and fairy tales. They're more often scary,

and that's why the wolf is scary.

But this wolf

is a wolf

of culture.

His layer is a glow with books.

What a wonderful adjective to use for a library, a glue with books.

There are people who need to be surrounded by books.

Does that make me a wolf? Yeah,

and the wolf inspires

from books to Wolf to

the eye of the poem.

Don't whatever you do. See that this is Carol Ann Duffy and Adrian Mitchell.

It kind of alludes. Everything in this book alludes hints, nudges, winks,

she says at the beginning of the third stroke. Exactly why

she's attracted to this wolf. And it's one word

poetry.

And that's why this

poem is at the beginning.

But look at what she's doing with her poetry.

She's

making little rhymes,

got their Wolf's Lair better beware

little rhymes within lines

that she is so clever.

I took an axe to a willow to see how it went. I took an extra summoned young It left,

and then

she kills the wall quite violently.

Screw them to throat.

And that's where something we come back to the

old story of the grandmother being eaten up.

She's got the big eyes, big ears, big teeth.

She's mixing,

She's transforming,

she's changing.

And that is one of the key words of the whole collection.

Transformation or, indeed, metamorphosis,

which will come to in a little while.

She's transforming the experience of the myth or the legend or the nursery rhyme

into something which could be personal experience.

Who is the red cap?

Is it a school girl wearing her school cap, which happens to be read and her blazer

going off with an older man, which is such a forbidden thing to do?

Yes, it is. It's the temptation of the forbidden,

the forbidden world of books and poetry.

Love poems.

And then, of course, they have a sexual relationship,

and she gives him a living bird, a white dove as

breakfast in bed.

Notice how she moves from the high poetic ideas to the mundane.

That's something we'll see again and again and again.

How nice breakfast in bed, he said,

licking his chops.

But she has to be cleverer than he is

now. This is something we'll see again and again.

The female of the species is deadlier than the male.

She is going to get the better of him whatever,

and that is going to be a keynote.

Women win in this collection,

and we can have such fun looking at the

brilliant lines at the little jokes at the half rhymes.

Little rhymes during the lines.

But don't miss the magic. Look at that wonderful magic line.

Birds are the uttered thoughts of tree.

Isn't that fabulous?

You can find lots and lots of lines that you're going to cherish.

Pick them out, make them your own, cherish them,

don't have the same favourite minds as everybody else

find your own

same with all the poems. Some of them will speak to you more.

I think the Red Cap speaks to all of us

because we all know the story of Little Red Riding

and the big bad wolf.

Well,

was the big bad wolf good

for the eye of this part?

I think the final line suggests Yeah,

I stitched him up

because

your mentors, the people who help you

to a certain extent, you've got to go beyond them

because otherwise you become

What,

a disciple,

a follower.

It's far too traditional

that the woman follows three steps behind the man.

Catalan isn't having any of that.

The woman comes out of the forest. I come

with my flowers

singing

all alone.

Now that is the image of the poet growing into her own voice.

With my flowers

singing

all alone,

she has been transformed. She has metamorphosed posed

from a young,

innocent

little school girl,

willing victim

of the wolf

into her own woman

with hair flowers

singing

all alone

And that all alone is a positive

alone