Professor Carol Ann Duffy DBE, captures the truth of each experience whether writing of longing or seduction, of passion, adultery, or simple everyday acts of love. 

Carol Ann Duffy wrote one of the most popular love poet, which is imaginative, heartfelt and direct about love and relationships exploring the notion of romantic love in the context of relationship, with complex emotion. The speaker of the poem offers her lover an onion as a Valentine’s gift not a conventional gift like stain hearts or roses. Her poems diaplays all the eloquence and skill that have made her one of the foremost poets of her time.

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

Like the careful undressing of love.

Here,

It will blind you with tears like a lover.

It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I gave you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, possessive and faithful

as we are, for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers, cling to your knife.

A new poem. By Carol Ann Duffy:

Near

Far, we are near, meet in the rain which falls here;

Gathered by light, air; falls there where you are, 

I am; lips to those drops now on yours nearer…

Absence the space we yearn in, clouds drift, cluster, 

east to west, north, south; your breath in them; they pour,

baptise; same sun burning through to harvest rainfall on skin, 

there, far; my mouth opening to spell your near name.