Gambler

• Emily Davison:suffrogete jumped in front of a horse and died for female rights
• Gambler‘ by Carol Ann Duffy explores the art of writing poetry through the extended metaphor of betting on horse racing. Duffy connects the random nature of betting with the quality of some words succeeding or failing.
• structure: Gambling is often seen as a precarious act, with this idea being the opposite of the regularity of Duffy’s structure. ‘she’, going against the common notion. This regularity in structure could then be a reflection of this certainty, ‘she’ knowing exactly what she would like to bet on.
• stanza 1 and 2: personal pronouns. ‘she’ is polysemous. female experience. anonymity of ‘she’ applicable to any woman. less important and has been forgotten. Yet, the lack of specificity could also suggest Duffy is empowering all women with her use of ‘she’.

   caesura after ‘words’, places emphasis freedom of language,.How ‘she’ decides which horse she will bet upon is simply down to the ‘names’. The word could be ‘heavy or firm’, Duffy referring to stressed syllables. Words are placed at the core of the poem, language being emphasized by Duffy as incredibly important.
• 3 and 4: internal rhyme across ‘picks’ and ‘ticks’ to increase paste as a race ‘two syllable’ names are important, going against the ’10-1’ bet. The woman disregards the gambling strategy in order to bet on the horses with pleasing names.

  The double repetition of ‘Indiannectar’ reflects love for words

  Duffy’s character says the words ‘over and over’, the phrase ‘over and over’ literally reflecting the content of the scene.
• 5 and 6 metephore ‘sits with her stump of a pen’. The fact it is a ‘stump’ could be emblematic of the voices of women being underrepresented their abilities ‘stump[ed]’

  woman sits ‘writing the poems of bets’, focusing on her craft. ‘how can she lose?’, producing poetry that reflects her own opinions and experience. cannot lose the ‘gamble’ of poetry,

  The final consonanceacross ‘Birth of the Blues’ closes Gambler on a moment of poetic harmony. Duffy emphasizes the beauty of poetry, ‘she’ completing her poem with balanced aural semantics.