40. Prayer

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we read through the thirty-ninth and final poem in the collection, 'Prayer', focusing in particular on: (i) the engagement with religious imagery throughout the entire collection; (ii) the echoes of other poems – the room from 'Room', perhaps, the "Latin chanting" echoing the "Latin names of plants" in 'The Windows', etc.; (iii) the sonnet form of the poem; (iv) the poem's final line, which takes the reader out to sea with the BBC Shipping Forecast ("Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre"); (v) the implication of "Finisterre" ('the end of land') in particular; and (vi) the connection between the Shipping Forecast and (Greenwich) Mean Time.

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.