24. Oslo

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we read through the twenty-third poem in the collection, 'Oslo', focusing in particular on: (i) the theme of going away and wanting to go back home ("You want to go home"); (ii) the combination of positives and negatives in the first part of the poem; (iii) the playfulness with language ("You bet, bet and bet"); (iv) the metaphor of gambling to describe the ups and downs of live ("This life, you win some, lose some"); (v) the image of the star, cf. 'First Love' ("And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely the size of a tear"); and (vi) the positivity of the final two lines.

Course

In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Carol Ann Duffy’s 1993 collection, ‘Mean Time'. After an introductory module in which we think about the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy in general and the collection as a whole – and especially the implications of its title – the course continues with a reading and analysis of each of the thirty-nine poems in the collection, one by one.

Lecturer

John McRae is Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies and Teaching Associate in the School of English at Nottingham University, and holds Visiting Professorships in China, Malaysia, Spain and the USA. He is co-author of The Routledge History of Literature in English with Ron Carter, and also wrote The Language of Poetry, Literature with a Small 'l' and the first critical edition of Teleny by Oscar Wilde and others.