Collected Poems is both the perfect single-volume introduction for new readers and a glorious opportunity for old friends to celebrate thirty years' work by one of the country's greatest literary talents.

Carol Ann Duffy's first Collected Poems includes all of the poems from her nine acclaimed volumes of adult poetry - from Standing Female Nude to Ritual Lighting - as well as her much-loved Christmas poems.

Endlessly varied, wonderfully inventive, and emotionally powerful, the poems in this book showcase Duffy's full poetic range: there are poems written in celebration and in protest; public poems and deeply personal ones; poems that are funny, sexy, heartbroken, wise. Taken together they affirm her belief that 'poetry is the music of being human'.

'Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time' - Rose Tremain, Guardian