Rapture

Carol Ann Duffy’s seventh collection is a book-length love poem, and a moving act of personal testimony; but what sets these poems apart is Duffy’s refusal to simplify the contradictions and transformations of love — infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation and grief. Instead, Rapture is a map of real love, in all its churning complexity, showing us that a song can be made of even the most painful episodes in our lives. These are poems that will find deep rhymes in the experience of most readers and will, ultimately, prove that poetry can and should speak for us all. ‘It isn’t often that I pick up a book of poems and read it straight through like a novel, but that is exactly what happened with Rapture. Read this book if you are in love, out of love or waiting for it to come along’ Daisy Goodwin, Mail on Sunday ‘Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time, and Rapture is essential reading for the broken-hearted of all ages’ Rose Tremain, Books of the Year, Guardian