This collection features a variety of lyrical forms, ranging from the use of sestines, sonnets, to dramatic monologues and haiku, thus paying homage to a British lyrical tradition whose sediments emerge distinctly throughout the work, and contents who sincerely deal with issues relating to both the public and personal sphere, alternating tones of contemptuous irony and acute observation with intimate and personal lyricisms that permeate the texts of a pervasive sense of suffering, loneliness, and nostalgic desire towards past worlds populated by people, the whose absence inhabits a dark and painful present with which the poet is called to confront.

Carol Ann Duffy (Glasgow, December 23, 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright, director of creative writing courses at Manchester Metropolitan University and, since May 1, 2009, a UK graduate poet, the first Scottish woman to be vested with this position. In Italy he published: The youngest old woman in the world (Turin, Einaudi, 2001), The wife of the world (edited by Giorgia Sensi and Andrea Sirotti, Florence, Le Lettere, 2002), Stolen childhood and other dark fairy tales ( Milan, Fabbri, 2006), Ecstasy (edited by Bernardino Nera and Floriana Marinzuli, Rome, Del Vecchio Editore, 2008), The woman on the moon (edited by Giorgia Sensi and Andrea Sirotti, Florence, Le Lettere, 2010), Lo splendor of the temple (edited by Bernardino Nera and Floriana Marinzuli, Milan, Crocetti, 2012), Le Api (edited by Giorgia Sensi and Andrea Sirotti, Florence, Le Lettere, 2014).