This volume draws together a body of work spanning the last twenty years. It
Includes:: poems from six major collections from Standing Female Nude" (1985) to " Feminine Gospels" (2002) & a handful of other poems collected here for the first time. It shows a writer who hit the ground running emerging into the world a fully formed & utterly distinctive voice & who twenty years later can be counted among the foremost of the poets of any generation. From the outset the world is her oyster. Carol Ann Duffys curiosity takes her across continents & into the minds of psychopaths babies queens & giggling schoolgirls with equal relish. It is a strange yet disarmingly familiar world shot with mythic fabulous & popular histories. Language is turned inside out & upside down its riches & exoticism found in the demotic of the everyday as much as in foreign parts. She has a quicksilver intelligence that can move from ribald mimicry one moment to an intensely tough & affecting lyricism the next. This physical visceral poetry gives true meaning to the concept of a body of work & will provide a perfect introduction to new readers & a glorious sum of parts to old acquaintances."