Duffy Flashcards
Dowson on ‘familiar seem alien’
‘Duffy’s tendency to make something familiar seem alien, what Freud famously called ‘unheimlich’ (uncanny) pushes the reader to a new awareness’
Dowson and the ‘other’
For Duffy, “outsidedness” is everywhere’
Wheale and the ‘other’
‘Duffy has often written of the newcomer, migrant experience’
British Council on Duffy and love
‘Duffy often writes about love with heartfelt feeling but never with sentimentality’
Barker on language
Duffy is ‘concerned about the limits and liberation of language, as well as its ability to shape self’
Barker on change
‘positive or negative, change is inevitable, shaping the way that we view the world and our place within it’
Dowson on language and humanity
Duffy draws on the language of her ‘contemporary culture’ and her ‘literary heritage to probe what it means to be human beyond a specific time and place’
Hill on Duffy’s prosaic language
‘commodity English… for Mills and Boon’
Dowson on play writing background
‘not surprising that she excels at the dramatic monologue’
Duffy on poetry
‘poetry is the music of being human’
Duffy on nationality
‘I have never felt a strong sense of national identity, ever, ever’
Woods on language
‘continual acknowledgement and exploration of the limits of language’
Duffy on death
‘I laugh, nay, sneer in the face of death’
Allan-Randolph on isolation
‘loneliness haunts her verse’ - similarly to Larkin, says Allan-Randolph
Duffy on emotional state of poetry
‘I’m not dealing with facts, I’m dealing with emotion’
