Carol Ann Duffy's "Collected Poems" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Seven poems from this anthology are set for study in English Standard: Close study of literature for the new Stage 6 English syllabus for 2027 and 2028:
‘War Photographer’, ‘Stealing’, ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’, ‘We Remember Your Childhood Well’, ‘The Good Teachers’, ‘Little Red Cap’ and ‘Mrs Midas’

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

What distinguishes Close study of literature from the other focus areas?

• Students develop knowledge, understanding and appreciation of a substantial literary text.
• In this case the text is a suite of seven poems.
• Students need to be an expert on all seven poems
• Students explore and analyse the ideas and characteristics of the poems and how these establish the poems’ distinctive qualities.
• Close and repeated reading and responding to all poems is essential
• Close study of the poems should involve an extensive exploration and interpretation of the ways Carol Ann Duffy portrays people, ideas, settings and situations in the poems
• Students need to consider the interplay between the ideas, form and language of each poem and to understand the ways textual forms, language and stylistic choices shape meaning
• Students need to be encouraged to develop personal and intellectual connections with the poems
• The HSC question on Close Study may specifically prescribe any of the seven poems.

Brief description of Carol Ann Duffy: Collected Poems

Duffy is an engaging and accessible poet who believes that ‘poetry is the music of being human’. Her poems range widely in both content and form. Her poems can be celebrations and protests. They can address public issues and be very private and personal. She can be wise and profoundly humorous, as well as serious and distraught. She uses simple words, even cliches, in a complicated way.

The selection for the NSW HSC examination in 2027 includes seven poems. ‘War Photographer’, has an emphasis on the horror of war and our ability to look away from its victims. ‘Stealing’ is about a young juvenile ‘thieving’ a snowman’s head while, ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’ is a beautiful exploration of a young child growing up in a primary school and the profound impact of a wonderful teacher. ‘We Remember Your Childhood Well’ is a disturbing, ambiguous dual monologue about parental denial when confronted by an unseen adult daughter about an abusive past. ‘The Good Teachers’ is about just that, good teachers and their impact on their students. ‘Little Red Cap’ is a very different interpretation of ‘Red Riding Hood’, and ‘Mrs. Midas’ is a comic; a crafty and yet moving dramatic monologue on the dramatic consequences of King Midas’ thoughtless and selfish wish to turn everything he touches to gold.

Distinctive features of Carol Ann Duffy: Collected Poems

• Accessible inventive and emotionally powerful poetic explorations 
• Dominance of dramatic monologues, (a form made famous by Robert Browning) with one Duffy poetic collection, The World’s Wife, being written from the perspective of historical and mythological characters’ wives 
• Poems that can be confronting, humorous, dark, satiric, compelling and frequently defy classification 
• A welcome variety in length of lines, purpose and content, personas and perspectives  
• Themes range from the horror of war to the benefits of good teachers and Duffy covers a wide variety of subjects, perspectives and emotions.

Ways to use Carol Ann Duffy: Collected Poems in the classroom

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

On first looking at a poem… 

Re-visit strategies for reading and accessing a poem to build student competence and above all, confidence. Students will do better if they can see and enjoy the way Duffy has shaped meaning.

Hints to students for reading a poem

• Trust your own insights 
• Expect the unexpected in a poem: something unusual, different, out of place
• You are unlikely to understand everything in one reading
• Be sure to hear the poem or read it aloud: follow the punctuation 
• What does the title say to you before you have read the poem? 
• What is happening in the poem? 
• What does the poet think about this experience and what does s/he want to share with us?

Some ideas for exploring ‘War Photographer’ in the classroom 

Context 
Bring some famous war photographs, to the classroom either as digital, images or printed A4 copies and ask students in groups to discuss the craft and content of the war photographers that took them. For example: 

• The Dead of Antietam (1862) 
• Warsaw Ghetto Boy (1943)  
• Saigon Execution (1968) 
• Napalm Girl (1972)  
• Iraqi Girl at Checkpoint (2005)

Synopsis
‘War Photographer’ was inspired by the profession of a friend. In the poem she explores the contradictions between a war photographer’s job: they record horrific events in people’s lives without being able to support or help them.  In her own way she is doing much the same thing but uses words, not photographs.  She is conscious that as readers and viewers we can become desensitised to the pictures we see and the words we read. 

This serious and reflective poem takes the reader though stages in the work of a war photographer. We start in a darkroom watching the examination of the spools of film, then move to developing the film and to memories of the places the photos were taken and to the actions of the newspaper editor carelessly selecting the photographs to run in the paper. The poem concludes with the photographer leaving England again for another assignment.  

Listen to the poem 
Play this dramatic reading to the class and ask students to discuss their first response. Then play it again and ask groups to consider what more came to light their understanding. 

Story board the poem
Ask students in groups to design a story board for the poem. This activity promotes the visual images in the poem and allows students to mimic the actions of the war photographer.

Form of the poem
The poem has four six line stanzas and a rhyming couplet at the end of each stanza. Ask students to consider why the poet might have chosen such a rigid structure when you consider the chaos of the war zones the photographer visits.  Is control, a need to distance himself from what he sees, reflected in the organisation of the poem?  

Language use
Religious language and imagery has a powerful impact in this poem. The poet uses the sense of sight to bring clear and contrasting images to the reader. Ask students in groups to identity and explain this imagery and language and consider how it sets and changes the mood and tone of the poem and reinvoices the key issues that Duffy is exploring in the poem.

Some ideas for exploring ‘Mrs Midas’ in the classroom 

Duffy says 

“I stumbled into this [a retelling the story from Ovid's metamorphoses of Midas] by accident …  and I decided to do that from the point of view of Mrs Midas—who's, in my version, in danger of being touched and turned to gold; so how would you deal with that? So, it was a story I was very familiar with and I was playing around with retelling to see if I could do something fresh with it.” 

Duffy certainly does something fresh with it. It is Mrs Midas retelling the famous story and her perspective is sharp, satiric and poignant. 

Ask students to research the Greek myth of King Midas and his golden touch from a variety of sources e.g. Penn Museum's Expedition Magazine and to compose a short precis of the myth.

Groups listen to performance of the poem read through the poem. Hear the poet read it or listen to actor Juliet Stevenson’s more compelling recitation. 

Ask questions and seek out answers 

• Where (time and place) does the poem appear to be set?
• How are we invited into the poem?  
• What tone does Duffy’s words suggest should be used when speaking the poem aloud? 
• What lines and images could make you laugh out loud?  
• Consider the actions of King Midas and those of his wife For instance, why did she lock the cat in the cellar and move the phone? But she didn’t mind about the toilet?  
• “I couldn’t believe my ears’ is a cliché.” Writers are often told to avoid clichés but Duffy employs them. Find some other examples of everyday speech in the poem ask – what is their effect?
• How does the poem explore greed and the consequences of our actions?
• What does the poem say about sex and love?  
• How are solitude and loneliness represented?
• What clear pictures emerge in your mind about the two characters in the poem? How would you describe the King and Mrs Midas?  
• Why title the poem Mrs Midas instead of Queen?
• What is distinctive about the poem’s ending?  

Table time

In groups discuss and decide what could be said about each poem under the following  headings. 

Individual writing task

Duffy said that “I’m very fond of something Picasso said . . . in his case painting, but I’ve taken it on board as a writer which is “Inspiration will come, but it must find you working.”

So, let’s get to work and meet the challenge of writing a poem in response to a line, an idea, a poem or an image in a poem by Duffy. Try to reflect your perspective on characters or ideas but uses Duffy’s diction e.g. use simple words in a complicated way’ and use the dramatic monologue form which so many of her poems use or if you prefer, another poetic form.  

Useful resources 

Duffy’s poems have been set for study in the UK and you will find good resources at the BBC on some of Duffy’s poems at their bitesize site.

HSC style question for the collected poems of Carol Ann Duffy 

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

1. Explain how Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry invites us into different human experiences through the use of the dramatic monologue?  In your response, make detailed reference to at least TWO of the poems set for study.
   
   
2. How do the connections between ideas, form and language inform your understanding of the significance of your prescribed text? In your response, make detailed reference to at least TWO of the poems set for study.
   
   
3.         ‘What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
           but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
           the contents of the house and came down here.
           I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
           and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
           even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.’ 
   
   The complexity and ambiguity of human relationships is central to the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy. To what extent do you agree with this statement?  In your response, make detailed reference to the extract from ‘Mrs Midas’ and ONE other poem set for study. 

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

In the Standard English course students are required to closely study 3 prescribed texts, with ONE drawn from each of the following categories:

• prose fiction
• poetry
• drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and her Collected Poems include a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives.

Possible pathways for HSC Standard English course