Carol Ann Duffy

What would happen if we lost the happy endings to stories - imagine the tears at bedtime! A fantastic and magical tale about what happens when, one night, a wicked witch steals the happy endings to bedtime stories. It is up to Jub, the keeper of the happy endings, to save the day and ensure sweet dreams everywhere in this lyrical story about storytelling. In the tradition of classic fairy tales for children, Carol Ann Duffy and Jane Ray have created a truly compelling, surprising and beautiful story for children of all ages.

A new collection of poems ranging over the experience of women--historical and imagined, real-life and larger than life--from the award-winning author of The World's Wife. From the sadness of Elizabeth I, looking back on her long and powerful but lonely life, to the travails of a woman whose work is literally never done as she continues to trawl the seas to feed her billion offspring, to a movingly lyrical reflection on the beauty of a growing child, Carol Ann Duffy explores in this volume the myriad components of women's lives and loves through the crystallizing prism of poetry. Sometimes erotic and personal, sometimes historical and grand, sometimes witty and full of surprises, the poems in Feminine Gospels are all beautifully crafted works that are as varied in style as the poems in Duffy's earlier acclaimed volume The World's Wife. Together, they will challenge and entertain as they explore the fullness of the female condition through their author's unique poetic voice.

'One of those rare nights in the theatre when some strange alchemy takes place in the dark and as a shiver runs down your spine and a bubble of laughter rises in your throat, you remember why theatre really matters and can be such a transforming experience.' GuardianIncludes the following dramatisations/stories:Blue BeardThe Husband Who Was to Mind the HouseThe Three WishesBeauty and the BeastThe Emperor's New ClothesToby and the WolfThe Juniper TreeThe Girl and the North WindBeasts and Beauties premiered at the Bristol Old Vic in April 2004.

This volume contains Carol Ann Duffy's adaptation plus the dramatization by Tim Supple and the Young Vic Company. The plays were produced by the Young Vic, London, in 1994 and 1997.'Great theatre is as fleeting as it is thrilling. It exists in the spaces between actors and audience and is as elusive and silvery as the paths that wind through dark woods of fairy tales. The great thing about Carol Ann Duffy's re-telling of these Grimm tales is the generous energy with which it enfolds each in its own style. Duffy and director Tim Supple go the whole journey with the brothers Grimm into the bright, warped world of a child's imagination.' Guardian'While a copy of this book would earn its place in the secondary school library, a set, for English or Drama departments, would provide a wealth of stimulating opportunities. Highly recommended.' School Librarian

Be terrified. It's you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you'll go, betray me, strayfrom home. So better by far for me if you were stone.--from "Medusa" Stunningly original and haunting, the voices of Mrs. Midas, Queen Kong, and Frau Freud, to say nothing of the Devil's Wife herself, startle us with their wit, imagination, and incisiveness in this collection of poems written from the perspectives of the wives, sisters, or girlfris of famous -- and infamous -- male personages. Carol Ann Duffy is a master at drawing on myth and history, then subverting them in a vivid and surprising way to create poems that have the pull of the past and the crack of the contemporary.

In Hand in Hand, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has selected thirty-six of the best world poets writing today and invited each of them to select a love poem written by the opposite sex which will appear opposite their own love poem. The poets have been encouraged to look to other centuries for their choice as well as to our own time. Simon Armitage, Hugo Williams, Billy Collins, Jackie Kay, Don Paterson, Jo Shapcott sit alongside Stevie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, John Donne. This is a wonderful, heartwarming collection for Valentine's Day and for every other day of the year.

In Duffy's second collection for children, we are trained by the oldest girl in the world to be alert to every one of our senses. Meet a bad princess, and a king of snide, discover spells to get rid of unwanted pests, and learn that transformation is a way of life.