EXTRAS

• Feminine Gospels


  A collection of poems by Carol Ann Duffy
• Poems near the end of Feminine Gospels

  Prayer-like and intense with feeling, whether love poems or elegies for the dead
• Critic Elaine Feinstein wonders if the placement of these poems at the end signals a movement or development, which will be revealed in Duffy's next book
• "The Light Gatherer" is placed after "The Laughter of Stafford Girls High"


  This falls into the section of Duffy's poems that have a personal and intimate, autobiographical feel, creating textual cohesion and an overarching, unified narrative about the nature of motherhood
• "Loud", "work", and "the woman who shopped" are bleak, harsh and unforgiving poems, likened to the Bible's apocryphal stories, which only enhances Duffy's central mission to get women's stories told
• Kerygmatic


  Capturing the irreducible essence of Duffy's "good news" proclamation - the possible dawning of a new world for women
• The long queen and the virgins memo are two poems that most completely showcase Duffy's essential purpose
• "The Long Queen"


  • Personifies the complex interconnection of womankind, time and herstory, functioning as a synecdoche of the female experience
• Women derive much comfort from recognising their unique rites of passage - joyful, challenging and painful alike - as inevitable, immutable and unchanging "laws that bind them together forever"