Over the course of the past year, I have been attempting to move my poetry away from a state of abstract otherworldliness, wanting to finetune the surreality into something more sensical, whilst maintaining an air of esotericism. My issue with poetry is and has always been my approach to it. I grew up with reading amateur internet poetry; unpublished and unpolished. I’ve always believed poetry to be little more than a collage of beautiful words that decorate the darkness of the subconscious. So, I know the source of my issue with creating poetry at a publishable standard is the sheer fact that I am unable to decipher the difference between amateur and professional. In order to rectify this, I have been furthering my reading of published poets …show more content…
This use of colloquial language informalizes the tone of the poem, and in doing so places the archaic figure of Salome in a contemporary setting, thus making her more relatable to a modern audience. The wit of the poem lends to establishing a portrait of Salome as a human being, rather than a mythologised figure of mystery, a muse for the Romantics. She is ‘hungover and wrecked’, and as is painfully real for many readers who’ve experienced hangovers, spending the morning after contemplating her life choices, telling herself to ‘get fitter / cut out the booze and the fags and the sex’. The poem is almost personalised in places, as the use of the Northern slang term alludes to Duffy’s Glaswegian roots, which suggests that Duffy envisions herself in this modern manifestation of Salome. This personal touch coupled with the casual language invites the reader to find parts of themselves in her too. This is something I wish to exorcise through my own poetry, and as I made my way through ‘The World’s Wife’ I realised that in order to create a collection that was both unique and believable, I should seek out the facets of personality in the women whose stories I wish to retell and attribute them to