‘Swooningly glorious’ The Times‘Indisputably her best volume’ Sunday TimesThe Bees is Carol Ann Duffy’s first collection of poems as Poet Laureate.In it she uses her full poetic range: there are drinking songs, love poems, poems of political anger; there are elegies, too, for beloved friends, and – most movingly – the poet’s own mother. Woven and weaving through the book is its presiding spirit: the bee.Sometimes the bee is Duffy’s subject, sometimes it strays into the poem, or hovers at its edge.In the end, Duffy’s point is clear: the bee symbolizes what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary for us to protect.The Bees, at once intimate and public, is a work of great power from one of our most cherished poets.