‘This book is going to be a hit, and can only consolidate Duffy’s position as one of the most widely read British poets of her generation’. Robert Crawford, Herald ‘It sparkes with wit, intelligence and an impressive lightness of touch, while drawing on some weighty emotional experiences: loneliness, jealousy, self-loathing, desire, the fierceness of a mother’s love’ Christina Patterson, Independent ‘She reveals the foibles of the great, the ghastly and the ordinary bloke and the sufferings of those closest to them. The result is a melange of history lesson, fairy-tale and modern-day domestic tragedy, with the occasional joke thrown in for good measure.... Duffy’s poetics are flawless - she never misses a beat, her pace is exhilarating, and her language is original and exciting’. Scotsman ‘These thirty poems vibrate with intense colloquialisms, physicality, energy, freshness and cheek. Many of them are very funny... the best are inventive, subversive and written with great rhythmical and rhyming dash’ Sunday Telegraph Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester, where she is Professor and Creative Director of The Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has written for both children and adults, and her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children’s Verse, the Whitbread and Forward Prizes, and the Lannan and E. M. Forster Prize in America. In 2005, she won the T. S. Eliot Prize for Rapture . She was appointed Poet Laureate in 2009.