yay
Carol Ann Duffy is the new UK poet laureate! I am thrilled.
She is the first woman in the post ever and the first Scot.
BUT she is not only Scottish, not only female, she was raised Catholic, is a lesbian, a mother, and an open atheist.
Boy, that would SO never happen in America.
Click here for a selection of her poems ( Read more... )
She is the first woman in the post ever and the first Scot.
BUT she is not only Scottish, not only female, she was raised Catholic, is a lesbian, a mother, and an open atheist.
Boy, that would SO never happen in America.
Click here for a selection of her poems ( Read more... )
Comments 5
Also, how in the hell did she write that poem (which is possibly in my top ten poems of all time) as an atheist?! Or is it just proof that we all have an undeniable, innate faith, whether we like it or not?
I also didn't realise she was a dyke. God, I am so behind the poetry times.
(BTW, in my teens I used to listen to the shipping forecast on my walkman radio to help me sleep. Perhaps I need to do that again.)
< / drunk commenting >
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She was educated in convent school, so she knows all about prayer. But prayer I think doesn't actually require a sentient power at whom it is directed; it's about ritual and connectedness with the layer of meaning and significance that is beyond the superficial empirical. You can be an atheist and still feel that -- it resides inside us, not in some mythical heaven.
I have always loved the shipping forecast, and used to turn on the radio especially to hear it when I lived in Liverpool.
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it's about ... connectedness with the layer of meaning and significance that is beyond the superficial empirical
I think for a lot of people this is faith. For many spiritual people (myself included), the divine is not in some mythical external heaven either, but in an internal experience, similar to that which you describe. Which is why I think Prayer is fundamentally a spiritual poem. Your Sonnet For The Faithless, too, come to think of it.
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