Tags: Poem.
Havisham is a poem written in 1998 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Charles Dickens’ character Miss Havisham from his novel Great Expectations looking at Havisham’s mental and physical state many decades after being left standing at the altar when the bride-to-be is in her old age. It expresses Havisham’s anger at her fiancé and her bitter rage over wedding-day trauma and jilted abandonment. Duffy’s use of language is very powerful and passionate.