Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester and after 341 Years,the first British Poet Laureate.
A contemporary poet, playwright I came across some years ago when I had to search a different way of telling my pupils about St.Valentine.

So I taught them the famous "Valentine" poem which I personally like to call according to one of its stanza I give you an onion.
They didn't react as I expected and they were not at all enchanted. For me it was an original way of speaking about feelings, deep thoughts and promises.
So I tried to teach that to the following generation, next year. Except from some burst of laughter, none got it better than their predecessors. I guess we are stubbornly determined to be stuck with the wide spread and accepted images which we grew up with and even things as being romantic goes according to certain stereotypes.
I like to think using images and I understand things by visualizing them. The image above is the way I see this poetry of Carol Ann Duff (and I hope that someday at least one more person (or pupil) will like it as much as I do:

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.