Nature

By Carol Ann Duffy

One of the English language’s best-loved living poets, in Nature Carol Ann Duffy presents us with her favourites among her poems on the natural world. Drawing on work written over four decades and arranged chronologically, Duffy also adds to her selection one wholly new poem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Mar 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781529096958

Carol Ann Duffy

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.

Book preview

The Dolphins

World is what you swim in, or dance, it is simple.

We are in our element but we are not free.

Outside this world you cannot breathe for long.

The other has my shape. The other’s movement

forms my thoughts. And also mine. There is a man

and there are hoops. There is a constant flowing guilt.

We have found no truth in these waters,

no explanations tremble on our flesh.

We were blessed and now we are not blessed.

After travelling such space for days we began

to translate. It was the same space. It is

the same space always and above it is the man.

And now we are no longer blessed, for the world

will not deepen to dream in. The other knows

and out of love reflects me for myself.

We see our silver skin flash by like memory

of somewhere else. There is a coloured ball

we have to balance till the man has disappeared.

The moon has disappeared. We circle well-worn grooves

of water on a single note. Music of loss forever

from the other’s heart which turns my own to stone.

There is a plastic toy. There is no hope. We sink

to the limits of this pool until the whistle blows.

There is a man and our mind knows we will die here.

1985

A Healthy Meal

The gourmet tastes the secret dreams of cows

tossed lightly in garlic. Behind the green door, swish

of oxtails languish on an earthen dish. Here are

wishbones and pinkies; fingerbowls will absolve guilt.

Capped teeth chatter to a kidney or at the breast

of something which once