Poet's Corner: Little Red-Cap by Carol Ann Duffy

Another poem from The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy.

Little Red-Cap by Carol Ann Duffy

At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
Into playing fields, the factory, allotments
Kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men
The silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan
Till you came at last to the edge of the woods
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf

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Poet's Corner: Queen Herod by Carol Ann Duffy

When I first started writing fic, for the first couple of years, I wrote only genderswap BBC Sherlock Holmes/John Watson. I liked this poem because it shows how interesting things can be when you flip things.

Queen Herod by Carol Ann Duffy

Ice in the trees.
Three Queens at the Palace gates,
dressed in furs, accented;
their several sweating, panting beasts
laden for a long hard trek,
following the guide and boy to the stables;
courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts
for the King and Queen of here – Herod, me –
in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds,
fruit, the best of meat and wine,
dancers, music, talk –
as it turned out to be,
with everyone fast asleep, save me,
those vivid three –
till bitter dawn.

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Poet's Corner: Anne Hathaway by Carol Ann Duffy

This is a sweet one. And one of the first ones where it seems the wife actually likes her husband.

Anne Hathaway by Carol Ann Duffy

Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’
(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.