The World’s Wife
Ciao and welcome back to my weekly column fellow art lovers. As a cure for such a rainy Tuesday, what could be better than a little bit of poetry?
Today’s artist, Carol Ann Duffy, Is one of my favourite poets of all time. Her work has given me a great amount of inspiration and especially strength. I deem her themes vital, timeless and empowering for any girl that is coming of age. Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1955. At sixteen, she met poet Adrian Henri who was twenty-three years older than her and began a relationship with him.
” He was great. It was all poetry, very heady, and he was never faithful. He thought poets had a duty to be unfaithful.”
Duffy’s relationship to Adrian Henri had an intense nature, especially the age difference and his position as her mentor made him not only her lover and role model, but also a persona that impacted her poetry and sexuality. After their relationship ended Duffy, came out as homosexual and this development of her mind and body can be traced in parts of her work.
My favourite poetry collection of hers is The World’s Wife which challenges myths, stories, legends and bible characters depicting these tales in a more feminist way, concentrating on the women rather than classically on the men. By doing this she creates a voice for the female characters that no longer are obscured behind the men in these stories, but rather Duffy allows them to embark on emotional journeys and dilemmas. She displays the depth, feelings and burden of these women that in the classic tales seem faceless and rather unimportant; changing them from the antagonists of these stories to the protagonists.
Many of Duffy’s pieces use metaphors, imagery and allegories to describe her intense relationship with Adrian Henri, especially in the poem “Little Red Cap” she uses the extended metaphor of the wolf and little red cap to demonstrate the dynamic between her and Henri as seen below.
“But got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night
Breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
What little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf”
Some of her other poems, on the other hand, use these literary devices to demonstrate women’s strength, fearlessness and courage but also their misfortune. In certain cases, her poems are somewhat violent and disturbing, nonetheless, each poem has the power to leave the reader speechless, they are so well thought through and eloquent while using familiar and conversational language. This enables any reader to comprehend the context of the poem and thus fluency and smoothness are created by Duffy.
Duffy not only gave rise to a social feminine poetic movement, but she changed my perception on every myth, biblical story and legend I have read since then. The hidden faces behind the women in those stories are no longer unknown, she has given them a voice, even if only on paper. I can only recommend anyone to dive into her work and read each of her masterpieces. My favourite one is below the story of Medusa, the women that was mistreated and became what she was made to become.