Carol Ann Duffy | Top 100 women | Books | The Guardian Carol Ann Duffy Top 100 women: writing and academia Carol Ann Duffy First tipped for the job 10 years earlier, she finally became the first female poet laureate in 2009 Carol Ann Duffy. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian Monday 7 March 2011 19.05 EST First published on Monday 7 March 2011 19.05 EST Share on Messenger Close The first female poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, 55, was first touted for the job in 1999, but was reluctant because of her status as a mother in a lesbian relationship. Ten years later she accepted, but insisted it was a prize for other women , saying: "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing." It was certainly a long-awaited acknowledgement – the first woman to be considered for the laureate, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was overlooked for Alfred Lord Tennyson. And after his death, rather than award it to Christina Rossetti, the position was left vacant until Alfred Austin was appointed.

Yet it seems fitting the first woman would be Duffy, not just critically acclaimed, but loved for her witty ways of filling the gaps left by women's silences in her collection, The World's Wife, which saw every poem told in the voice of a wife of a great historical figure, and Feminine Gospels. Carol Ann Duffy | Poetry | Scottish Poetry Library Scottish Poetry Library Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955) Carol Ann Duffy Biography Summary The first female, Scottish Poet Laureate in the role's 400 year history, Carol Ann Duffy's combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms, has won her a very wide audience of readers and listeners. Full Biography Carol Ann Duffy was born in the Gorbals (Glasgow) on 23 December 1955, the first child of May (née Black) and Frank Duffy; May was Irish and Frank had Irish grandparents. They subsequently had four sons, and moved when Carol Ann was six to Stafford, where her father worked for English Electric and managed Stafford Rangers Football Club in his spare time. Duffy attended Roman Catholic primary and middle schools, and then Stafford Girls’ High.

Her early passion for reading and writing was encouraged by two of her English teachers, and developed by the poet-artist Adrian Henri (one of a trio of Liverpool poets whose work was famously anthologised as ‘The Mersey Sound’ in 1967), with whom she lived from the age of 16 until 1982. She went to the University of Liverpool, and obtained a degree in Philosophy in 1977. Having already published three poetry collections - Fleshweathercock and Other Poems (Outposts, 1974), Beauty and the Beast with Adrian Henri (a pamphlet, 1977), and Fifth Last Song (Headland, 1982), she became more widely known when she won the National Poetry Competition in 1983, and an Eric Gregory Award the following year. As she commented for the Poetry Society website about twenty-five years later: ‘In those days, one was still called a "poetess" – so it meant a lot, as a young woman poet, to begin to try to change that.

And, oh girls, just look at us now...’ Anvil Poetry Press became her publisher with Standing Female Nude in 1985; Selling Manhattan (1987) brought her the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Other Country (1990) gained a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. These volumes contain some of her best-known poems: ‘Education for Leisure’ (SFN), which was to become notorious in 2008 when it was removed from a GCSE poetry anthology after complaints that it endorsed a culture of violence; ‘Warming her Pearls’ (SM), a maidservant’s erotic reflection on wearing her mistress’ necklace; and the meditations on home and displacement, ‘Originally’ and ‘The Way My Mother speaks’ (TOC). Mean Time (1993) scooped the prize pool, with an award from the Scottish Arts Council, the Forward Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry.

(It was only the second year of the Forward prizes, and the one for best first collection went to Don Paterson for Nil Nil.) ‘Prayer’ from this volume, a sonnet that concludes with the mantra of the BBC shipping forecast, has become one of her best-loved poems. Duffy became a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996, by which time she was living with the writer Jackie Kay, and had a daughter, Ella (born 1995). She subsequently became Creative Director of the MMU Writing School. Her very productive writing life included plays, editing anthologies, poetry for children, and her last collection for Anvil, the immensely popular The World’s Wife (1999). Duffy’s readings often feature a set of these dramatic monologues, which are particularly effective in performance: ‘Mrs Midas’, ‘Mrs Faust’, ‘Mrs Tiresias’, and the comic ‘Mrs Aesop’ and ‘Mrs Darwin’. She moved to Picador with her volume Feminine Gospels, published in 2002, the same year she became CBE (having received an OBE in 1995). Duffy received the T.S.

Eliot Prize for Rapture (Picador, 2005), 52 poems charting a love affair, published after the break-up of her relationship with Kay. Ruth Padel wrote: The three strong books that made her name in the Nineties blazed with voicings; with dramatic characters, a bomber, a psychopath, an American buying Manhattan. This voicing power emerged again in The World's Wife, along with the same sharp humour, social criticism and satire. But those collections ended in love poems and you felt that this, in the end, was what really drove Duffy's work. In Rapture, it comes to its full flowering: ruthless, sensuous, tender; utterly modern, utterly classical. (Independent, 16 September 2005) It was not only such awards that made her well-known, but her public performances, as the opportunities provided by literary festivals and poetry readings grew exponentially in the 21st century.

Along with other poets of her generation, her work has been set for examinations in schools throughout Britain, and a group of these poets have regularly read their poems to huge audiences of GCSE students as part of the ‘Poetry Live’ sessions that are now a feature of the school year in England and Wales. In 2009 as part of the Edinburgh Festival she gave the first performances of The Princess’s Blankets, with musician John Sampson and Ella Duffy, a blend of poetry, music and fairytale involving ‘hilarious Queens, ancient rock'n'rollers, Mozart, Peggy Guggenheim and a sad Princess who is always cold’. There was speculation that she would become Poet Laureate on the death of Ted Hughes in 1999, but the post went to Andrew Motion. She declared that the post was worthwhile as it was ‘good to have someone who is prepared to say that poetry is part of our national life’, and in an interview in The Independent predicted that poetry would ‘become more important and take a larger part in our lives in the next century’.

Appointed Poet Laureate in 2009, Duffy has made sure that poetry does make its mark in national discussions and debate, publishing her poems in newspapers (tabloid and broadsheet) and on the radio. Her first laureate poem was a sonnet on the British MPs expenses scandal; other subjects include the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, the last two British soldiers to fight in World War I (‘Last Post’); the Achilles tendon injury that left England Footballer David Beckham out of the 2010 FIFA World Cup (‘Achilles – for David Beckham’); the Iraq inquiry and the war in Afghanistan (‘The Big Ask’), and the Royal Mail’s plans to delete the names of counties from postal addresses (‘The Counties’). Her laureateship has been marked by her generous creation of opportunities for other poets: getting many poets to write for notable occasions such as the wedding of Prince William and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee; gathering them for readings in London and Edinburgh to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake in 2009; and donating her Laureate payment as a Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.

Duffy has been quoted as saying that she is ‘not interested, as a poet, in words like “plash” – Seamus Heaney words, interesting words. I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way’; and in the same Guardian profile, ‘Childhood is like a long greenhouse where everything is growing, it's lush and steamy. It's where poems come from’ (31 August 2002). If love, as Padel suggests, has always been at the centre of her poetry, this is not only romantic and sexual, it is also both daughterly and intensely maternal. Myth and fairy-tale are vital to her imagining of the world, but they are given contemporary voices in her poems. The combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms, has won her a very wide audience of readers and listeners. As fellow-poet Sean O’Brien wrote: ‘Poetry, like love, depends on a kind of recognition.

So often with Duffy does the reader say, “Yes, that’s it exactly,” that she could well become the representative poet of the present day.’ In 2009, she accepted the post of Poet Laureate, making her the first female, Scottish Poet Laureate in the role's 400 year history.

Standing Female Nude (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1985) Selling Manhattan (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1987) The Other Country (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1990) Mean Time (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1993) Selected Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994) The World's Wife (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1999) Feminine Gospels (London: Picador, 2002) New Selected Poems (London: Picador, 2004) Rapture (London: Picador, 2005) Love Poems (London: Picador, 2010) The Bees (London: Picador, 2011) The Christmas Truce (London: Picador, 2011) Wenceslas: a Christmas poem (London: Picador, 2012) Bethlehem: a Christmas poem (London: Picador, 2013) Ritual Lighting, with artwork by Stephen Raw (London: Picador, 2014) The Wren Boys (London: Pic

ador, 2015) Collected Poems (London: Picador, 2015) children's poetry Meeting Midnight (London: Faber and Faber, 1999) The Oldest Girl in the World (London: Faber and Faber, 2000) The Good Child's Guide to Rock‘n’Roll (London: Faber and Faber, 2003) Another Night Before Christmas (London: John Murray, 2005) The Hat (London: Faber and Faber, 2007) New and Collected Poems for Children (London: Faber and Faber, 2009) The Gift (Bath: Barefoot, 2010) 101 Poems for Children: a Laureate's choice (London: Macmillan, 2013) as editor Time's Tidings: greeting the 21st century (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1999) Hand in Hand: an anthology of love poems (London: Picador, 2001) Out of Fashion: an anthology of poems (London: Faber and Faber

, 2004) Overheard on a Saltmarsh: poets' favourite poems (London: Macmillan, 2003) Answering Back (London: Picador, 2007) To The Moon: an anthology of lunar poetry (London: Picador, 2009) 1914: poetry remembers (London: Faber, 2013) Selected Biography and Criticism Sean O’Brien, ‘Carol Ann Duffy: a stranger here myself’ in The Deregulated Muse (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1998) Deryn Rees-Jones, Carol Ann Duffy (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999) Angelica Michelis and Anthony Rowland (eds), The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy: ‘choosing tough words’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003) Christopher Whyte, ‘The 1990s’ in Modern Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004) Jane Dowson and Alice Entwhistle, ‘Dialogic politics in Carol Ann Duffy and others’ in A History of Twentieth-Century British Women’s Poetry (Cambridge

: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Vicki Bertram, ‘Thrown Voices: dramatic monologues by Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay and Jo Shapcott’ in Gendering Poetry: contemporary women and men poets (London: Pandora, 2005) Carol Ann Duffy | poetryarchive.org Tweet Widget About Carol Ann Duffy On May 1st 2009, Carol Ann Duffy became the UK's twentieth Poet Laureate.

She is one of Britain's best known and most admired poets. Her poems appeal to those who wouldn't usually read poetry and they appear on the national curriculum. Here, an Observer reviewer celebrates her popularity and her technical adroitness: "Duffy's poems are at once accessible and brilliantly idiosyncratic and subtle". She writes of life in all its sadness - life, as what Eliot calls, that "infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing". She was born in Glasgow in 1955 to a Scottish father and an Irish mother. Raised Catholic, she grew up in Staffordshire an ardent reader and elder sister to four brothers. Her mother would invent fairy tales for her - a form whose archetypes she has always found seductive. She has been particularly interested in exploring feminine archetypes, which she subverts with dexterity in The World's Wife (Anvil Press Poetry 1999). Duffy wanted from a very early age to be a writer and was encouraged to write poetry by an inspirational teacher at a Convent school when she was ten years old. Duffy graduated from Liverpool University in 1977 with a BA in Philosophy.

She won the National Poetry Competition in 1983, an Eric Gregory Award in 1984 and her first collection Standing Female Nude (1985) was met with acclaim. Robert Nye in The Times declared the book "The debut of a genuine and original poet". In 1993, Mean Times won the Forward Best Collection Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Whitbread Poetry Award. She has gone on to publish many books for adults and children and is also an acclaimed playwright and editor. A sense of the ritual of language learned in her school days pervades Duffy's work, although she is no longer a practicing Catholic. Indeed, her much anthologized sonnet 'Prayer' speaks of religious feelings and of epiphanies, but also of the absence of formal religious beliefs. "Poetry and prayer are very similar," she explains. "I write quite a lot of sonnets and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite." In 2005, she was awarded the TS Eliot Prize for Rapture, a collection of love poems in variations of that traditional alchemic shape for love poems - the sonnet.

The narrative begins with a celebration of 'You' as an "untouchable dream", and charts the joy and the agonies of love all-consuming, ending with 'Over.' You can listen to some of these poems here, and experience the whole of Rapture brought to life movingly by Duffy on a special Poetry Archive CD. This recording was made on 31st March 2009 at the BBC Studios in Manchester and was produced by Richard Carrington. Additional material and useful links BBC Poetry Season - Duffy Speaking in 1989, Carol Ann Duffy reveals what inspires her to write and talks about her role as a feminist poet. Carol Ann Duffy becomes first female poet laureate | Books | The Guardian Carol Ann Duffy becomes first female poet laureate Duffy takes poetry's most prestigious job, succeeding Andrew Motion, as a standard-bearer for women poets Friday 1 May 2009 05.02 EDT First published on Friday 1 May 2009 05.02 EDT Close This article is 7 years old Four hundred years of male domination came to an end today with the election of Carol Ann Duffy as poet laureate.

Duffy, the widely-tipped favourite for the post , only agreed to accept the post ahead of poets Simon Armitage and Roger McGough because "they hadn't had a woman". Speaking on Woman's Hour this morning on Radio 4, she revealed that she had thought "long and hard" about accepting the offer. "The decision was purely because they hadn't had a woman," she said. "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing, like Alice Oswald." Duffy said she was ready to deal with the scrutiny which comes as part and parcel of the laureateship, suggesting that her experience of public appearances would stand her in good stead, but that she would vigorously defend her private life. "I'm a very private person and I will continue to fiercely protect my privacy and my daughter," she said. She declared herself ready to tackle the official verse which the laureateship requires, but only if the occasion inspired her. "If not, then I'd ignore it," she said. She plans to donate her yearly stipend of £5,750 to the Poetry Society to fund a new poetry prize for the best annual collection.

"I didn't want to take on what basically is an honour on behalf of other poets and complicate it with money," she explained. "I thought it was better to give it back to poetry." She has, however, asked that her "butt of sack" – the 600 bottles of sherry traditionally given to the laureate – should be delivered up front, after learning that Motion is yet to receive his allocation. News of her appointment began to leak earlier this week, when bookmakers stopped taking bets following a rush of money backing Duffy. This year marked the first occasion on which the public was invited to make suggestions for the laureateship to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – a move which is likely to have helped the bestselling Duffy to clinch the role. The DCMS also consulted with the poetry establishment to come up with a shortlist for the laureate, and passed this on to Number 10, with the Queen approving the final choice of Duffy. Gordon Brown, the prime minister, congratulated her as both the first poet laureate of the 21st century and "as the first woman to hold the post".

Calling her a "truly brilliant modern poet" he paid tribute to her ability to put "the whole range of human experiences into lines that capture the emotions perfectly" and wished her well for her ten-year term. She takes over from current incumbent Andrew Motion, who wished her luck in an email exchange earlier this morning. Motion has completed a decade in the post, writing poems for events including the Queen's 80th birthday in 2006, the 100th birthday and death of the Queen Mother, and a rap for Prince William's 21st. Duffy, 53, narrowly missed out on the laureateship to Motion in 1999 after the death of Ted Hughes, who had held the post since 1984. Despite being widely held as favourite at the time, she was reluctant to take up the prominent role given her status as a mother in a lesbian relationship (with the Scottish poet Jackie Kay; the relationship has since ended). At the time, Duffy told the Guardian that she "didn't want to do the thing", but when "all these stories started appearing, I got scores of letters from women saying do it, do it, do it. But I was never really sure.

I never really came out and said whether I wanted it or not." Quoted as saying that the role needed to be "much more democratic", more people's poet than monarch's bard, and that she would "not write a poem for Edward and Sophie - no self-respecting poet should have to", she'd actually backed the late UA Fanthorpe – whose death aged 79 was announced yesterday – for the post. As one of the bestselling poets in the UK, Duffy has managed to combine critical acclaim with popularity: a rare feat in the poetry world. Her 1999 collection The World's Wife, which saw every poem told in the voice of a wife of a great historical figure, from Mrs Aesop to Queen Herod, was the first to gain her mass appeal. She went on to add a CBE in 2002 to her 1995 OBE, and won the TS Eliot prize in 2005 for her collection of linked love poems, Rapture. She has also won the Dylan Thomas award, the Whitbread poetry prize, the Somerset Maugham award and the Forward prize, and features regularly on school and university syllabuses.

Furthermore, she is no stranger to the writing to deadline that the laureateship requires; last September saw her penning a swift poetic response to the news that one of her collections had been removed from the GCSE syllabus for supposedly glorifying knife crime. In an interview with Jeanette Winterson, Duffy said that when she started on the poetry circuit in the 70s, she was called a "poetess". "Older male poets, the Larkin generation, were both incredibly patronising and incredibly randy. If they weren't patting you on the head, they were patting you on the bum," she said. She stressed to Winterson that she was "not a lesbian poet, whatever that is". "If I am a lesbian icon and a role model, that's great, but if it is a word that is used to reduce me, then you have to ask why someone would want to reduce me? I never think about it. I don't care about it.

I define myself as a poet and as a mother – that's all." As well as her seven collections for adults, marked by their accessibility, lightness of touch and emotional depth, Duffy also writes poetry and picture books for children, edits anthologies, and has written a number of well-received plays. She lives in Manchester, where she is creative director of the writing school at Manchester Metropolitan University. The origins of the laureateship are somewhat hazy, but Ben Jonson is believed by many to have been the first to hold the position; the role (along with a pension of 100 marks a year) was conferred on him by James I. Previous laureates include Wordsworth, Tennyson, Cecil Day-Lewis and John Betjeman. The first woman to be considered for the laureateship was Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1850, when William Wordsworth died, but Tennyson was chosen in her stead. Forty-two years later, Christina Rossetti was overlooked on Tennyson's death, when rather than appoint a woman the position was left vacant until Alfred Austin – viewed today as one of the worst ever laureates – was appointed.

Motion, who is the first laureate to resign the office, has advised his successor to take "steps to preserve [their] privacy", saying last year that "no matter how well known you are as a writer, it's almost impossible to imagine what it is like being jerked out of one semi-private life into a more-or-less public life". He has also warned about the havoc the laureateship can wreak on one's own writing. "I dried up completely about five years ago and can't write anything except to commission," he said last September. Last week he read out his final piece of public verse, a series of limericks about the budget he composed while in the bath which concluded: "The duty of writing / Lines sharp and exciting / On this – it ain't mine, but my heir's as PL." Carol Ann Duffy | Poetry Foundation Poetry Foundation Carol Ann Duffy is an award-winning Scots poet who, according to Danette DiMarco in Mosaic, is the poet of "post-post war England: Thatcher's England." Duffy is best known for writing love poems that often take the form of monologues.

Her verses, as an Economist reviewer described them, are typically "spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world." Although she knew she was a lesbian since her days at St. Joseph's convent school, her early love poems give no indication of her homosexuality; the object of love in her verses is someone whose gender is not specified. Not until her 1993 collection, Mean Time, and 1994's Selected Poems, does she begin to write about homosexual love. Duffy's poetry has always had a strong feminist edge, however. This position is especially well captured in her Standing Female Nude, in which the collection's title poem consists of an interior monologue comprising a female model's response to the male artist who is painting her image in a Cubist style. Although at first the conversation seems to indicate the model's acceptance of conventional attitudes about beauty in art—and, by extension, what an ideal woman should be—as the poem progresses Duffy deconstructs these traditional beliefs. Ultimately, the poet expresses that "the model cannot be contained by the visual art that would regulate her," explained DiMarco.

"And here the way the poem ends with the model's final comment on the painting 'It does not look like me'—is especially instructive. On the one hand, her response suggests that she is naive and does not understand the nature of Cubist art. On the other hand, however, the comment suggests her own variableness, and challenges traditionalist notions that the naked model can, indeed, be transmogrified into the male artist's representation of her in the nude form. To the model, the painting does not represent either what she understands herself to be or her lifestyle." Duffy, who is currently the United Kingdom's poet laureate, was seriously considered for the position in 1999. Prime Minister Tony Blair's administration had wanted a poet laureate who exemplified the new "Cool Britannia," not an establishment figure, and Duffy was certainly anything but establishment. She is the Scottish-born lesbian daughter of two Glasgow working-class radicals. Her female partner is also a poet and the two of them are raising a child together.

Duffy has a strong following among young Britons, partially as a result of her poetry collection Mean Time being included in Britain's A-level curriculum, but Blair was worried about how "middle England" would react to a lesbian poet laureate. There were also concerns in the administration about what Britain's notorious tabloids would write about her sexuality, and about comments that Duffy had made urging an updated role for the poet laureate. In the end, Blair opted for the safe choice and named Andrew Motion to the post. After Duffy had been passed over, Katherine Viner wrote in the Guardian Weekend that her "poems are accessible and entertaining, yet her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. She is read by people who don't really read poetry, yet she maintains the respect of her peers. Reviewers praise her touching, sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia; fans talk of greeting her at readings 'with claps and cheers that would not sound out of place at a rock concert.'" Viner lamented that Duffy only came to the attention of many people when she was caricatured and rejected as poet laureate.

However, the poet got some satisfaction when she earned the National Lottery award of 75,000 pounds, a sum that far exceeded the stipend that poet laureates receive. After the laureate debacle, Duffy was further vindicated when her next original collection of poems, The World's Wife, received high acclaim from critics. In what Antioch Review contributor Jane Satterfield called "masterful subversions of myth and history," the poems in this collection are all told from the points of view of the women behind famous male figures, both real and fictional, including the wives and lovers of Aesop, Pontius Pilate, Faust, Tiresius, Herod, Quasimodo, Lazarus, Sisyphus, Freud, Darwin, and even King Kong. Not all the women are wives, however. For example, one poem is told from Medusa's point of view as she expresses her feelings before being slain by Perseus; "Little Red-Cap" takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a new level as a teenage girl is seduced by a "wolf-poet." These fresh perspectives allow Duffy to indulge in a great deal of humor and wit as, for example, Mrs.

Aesop grows tired of her husband's constant moralizing, Mrs. Freud complains about the great psychologist's obsession with penises, Sisyphus's bride is stuck with a workaholic, and Mrs. Lazarus, after finding a new husband, has her life ruined by the return of her formerly dead husband. There are conflicting emotions as well in such poems as "Mrs. Midas," in which the narrator is disgusted by her husband's greed, but, at the same time, longs for something she can never have: his physical touch. "The World's Wife appeals and astonishes," said Satterfield. "Duffy's mastery of personae allows for seamless movement through the centuries; in this complementary chorus, there's voice and vision for the coming ones." An Economist reviewer felt that the collection "is savage, trenchant, humorous and wonderfully inventive at its best." And Ray Olson, writing in Booklist, concluded that "Duffy's takes on the stuff of legends are . . . richly rewarding." Duffy has also written verses for children, many of which are published in Meeting Midnight and Five Finger-Piglets. The poems in Meeting Midnight, as the title indicates, help children confront their fears by addressing them openly.

"They explore the hinterland in a child's imagination where life seems built on quicksand and nameless worries move in and will not leave," explained Kate Kellaway in an Observer review. Kellaway also asserted that "these are real poems by one of the best English poets writing at the moment." In addition to her original poetry, Duffy has edited two anthologies, I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists and Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, and has adapted eight classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales in Grimm Tales. Not intended for young children but for older children and young adults in drama and English classes, Grimm Tales includes adaptations of such stories as "Hansel and Gretel" and "The Golden Goose," which are rewritten "with a poet's vigor and economy, combining traditions of style with direct, colloquial dialogue," according to Vida Conway in School Librarian. Bibliography Fleshweathercock, and Other Poems, Outposts (Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England), 1973. Fifth Last Song, Headland (Wirral, Merseyside, England), 1982.

Standing Female Nude, Anvil Press (London, England), 1985. Thrown Voices, Turret Books (London, England), 1986. Selling Manhattan, Anvil Press (London, England), 1987. The Other Country, Anvil Press (London, England), 1990. Mean Time, Anvil Press (London, England), 1993. Selected Poems, Penguin (London, England)/Anvil Press (London, England), 1994. The Pamphlet, Anvil Press (London, England), 1999. The World's Wife, Picador (New York, NY), Faber & Faber (London, England), 2000. Rapture, Picador (New York, NY), 2005. PLAYS Take My Husband (two-act), first produced in Liverpool, England, at Liverpool Playhouse, December 4, 1982. Cavern of Dreams (two-act), first produced in Liverpool at Liverpool Playhouse, August 3, 1984.

Loss (one-act), first broadcast by BBC-Radio, July 22, 1986. Little Women, Big Boys (one-act), first produced in London, England, at Almeida Theatre, August 8, 1986. FOR CHILDREN (Adaptor) Grimm Tales, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1996. Meeting Midnight (poems), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1999. (With Jackie Kay, Roger McGough, Gareth Owen, Brian Patten) Five Finger-Piglets (poems), Macmillan (London, England), 1999. The Oldest Girl in the World, Faber & Faber (London, England), 2000. OTHER (Editor) Home and Away, Southern Arts (Thamesdown, England), 1988.

(Editor and contributor) I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Anthology of Women's Poetry, illustrated by Trisha Rafferty, Viking (New York, NY), 1992, published as I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists, Holt (New York, NY), 1993. (Editor) Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, illustrated by Trisha Rafferty, Holt (New York, NY), 1996. (Editor) Time's Tidings: Greeting the Twenty-first Century, Anvil Press (London, England), 1999. Duffy's manuscripts are housed at the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University. Further Readings Carol Ann Duffy - Poet | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets poet Carol Ann Duffy On December 23, 1955, Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland to Mary Black and Frank Duffy, both of Irish Catholic descent. Together with her four younger brothers, she was raised in Staffordshire in the West Midlands of England where her father worked as a fitter with English Electric. She received a degree in philosophy from Liverpool University in 1977. Her first job was writing for television shows, followed by a C. Day Lewis Fellowship to work as a writer-in-residence in East End schools of London from 1982 and 1984.

Duffy's books of poetry include: New & Collected Poetry for Children (Faber and Faber, 2009); Rapture (Macmillan, 2006); Selected Poems (Penguin, 2004); Feminine Gospels (2002); and The World's Wife (2000), a collection of poetic retellings voiced by the wives of the famous and infamous. Her earlier volumes include: Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize; The Other Country (1990); Selling Manhattan (1987), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and her first collection, Standing Female Nude (1985), for which she received a Scottish Arts Council Award. Dramatic characters and narratives, voiced with a sharp edge of wit and social critique, characterize Duffy's early work, while her recent collections have wrestled more directly with dark and tangled themes of love.

Writing for The Independent, Ruth Padel called Rapture "a superb demonstration of … Duffy's formidably inventive artistry, her dedication to the craft and tradition of poetry, and above all the love poem." In addition to poetry, Duffy has edited numerous anthologies, authored several critically-acclaimed plays and children's books, and has collaborated with the singer and composer Eliana Tomkins on a series of jazz performances. Her books for children include The Hat (2007), The Oldest Girl in the World (2000), and Meeting Midnight (1999). Her awards include a five-year grant from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in England, a Lannan Literary Award, and the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. In 1999, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in England and her papers were acquired by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University. Duffy was the longtime editor of the poetry magazine Ambit, and has been a frequent reviewer and critic for many publications, including The Guardian. She lives in Manchester and is the Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Duffy was appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate on May 1, 2009, becoming both the first woman and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the position in its more than 300 year history. by this poet Carol Ann Duffy to be first female Poet Laureate - Telegraph Culture News Carol Ann Duffy to be first female Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy will be named as the new Poet Laureate - the first female laureate in the post's 341-year history. Carol Ann Duffy 7:54AM BST 01 May 2009 Duffy will succeed Andrew Motion, who has held the post since 1999. The official announcement will by made by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham in Manchester, where Duffy lives and works. The 53-year-old will become the latest in a line of poets which began with John Dryden and has included such great names as William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Betjeman. Other possible candidates for the £5,000-a-year job included Simon Armitage, Roger McGough and Benjamin Zephaniah.

The laureate is officially appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Government and until Tony Blair established a 10-year tenure in 1999, was a job for life. Related Articles Carol Ann Duffy: Profile of the new Poet Laureate 01 May 2009 Part of the laureate's remit is to write poems to commemorate major state occasions and events involving the Royal Family - a task which Motion said he found extremely difficult. His poem in the style of a rap for Prince William's 21st birthday is unlikely to feature in any future anthologies of English verse, but Motion said he was pleased with works he produced for the Queen Mother's 100th birthday and the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Earlier this week Motion said he was "relieved" to be leaving the job. Duffy, who was born in Glasgow, was the favourite throughout the six-month selection process, which included input from the public for the first time. She was in the running for the job when it was given to Motion but missed out amid rumours that r Mr Blair was worried how "Middle England" would react to a lesbian laureate.

The announcement will be made at Manchester University's John Rylands Library. Carol Ann Duffy | Biography, Books and Facts [Cite This] Carol Ann Duffy Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish-Irish poet, born on 23rd December 1955 in Gorbals, Glasgow. The family moved to England when Duffy was six years old. She attended Saint Austin’s RC Primary School, went on to Joseph’s Convent School and then Stafford Girl’s High School. Her writing talent was recognized by some of her teachers. She was a keen reader and writer of poems from an early age. At age 15 one of her teachers, June Scriven sent Duffy’s poems to a publisher, who was impressed by them and thus published them. She started a relationship with the poet Adrian Henri, living with him till 1982. To be closer to him, Duffy enrolled in the University of Liverpool. During this time she wrote two plays and a pamphlet named ‘Fifth Last Song’. She received her degree in philosophy in 1977. She rose to fame in the UK after winning Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition (1983) for her poem ‘ Whoever She was ’.

Carol Ann Duffy is the first female poet to be appointed to the position of poet laureate . She wrote a poem after becoming poet laureate regarding a scandal faced by the British MPs expenses. Her second poem was called ‘ Last Post ’ and it was used by BBC to commemorate the last two British soldiers to have fought in the First World War; namely Henry Allingham and Harry Patch. ‘ The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009 ’ was her third poem in which she tackles various issues such as extinction of species, the conference held in Copenhagen regarding climate change, the crisis in the banking sector and the Afghanistan War. Duffy’s poem ‘ Achilles ’ was written for the footballer David Beckham , after he could not participate in the FIFA world cup of 2010. The poem described the modern day celebrity culture as a ‘mythicisation’. She also gifted her poem ‘ Rings ’ to Prince William and Catherine Middleton for their wedding in 2011.

As a Playwright Duffy wrote several plays including ‘Take My Husband’ (1982), ‘Cavern of Dreams’ (1984), ‘Little Women, Big Boys’ (1986), ‘Loss’ (1986) and ‘Casanova’ (2007). She has also written poetry for children such as ‘Meeting Midnight’ (1999) and ‘The Oldest Girl in the World’ (2000). Her recent children’s’ books also include ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ (2006), ‘The Tear Thief’ (2007) and ‘The Princess Blankets’ (2009). Her collection of poems titled ‘ Standing Female Nude ’ published in 1985 received the ‘ Scottish Arts Council Award ’. ‘ Selling Manhattan ’ (1987) won the ‘Somerset Maugham Award’ and ‘ Mean Time ’ published in 1993 was awarded the ‘Whitbread Poetry Award’. ‘ Rapture ’, her 2005 offering got the ‘T.S Elliot Prize’.

Her poems deal with many social issues like gender, violence and tyranny making them popular for studying in schools in the GCSE, O and A levels courses. She has won many other awards and honors such as ‘Costa Poetry Award’ (2011), ‘Signal Poetry Award’ (1997), ‘CBE’ (2001), ‘Cholmondeley Award’ (1992), ‘Dylan Thomas Award’ (1989), ‘Eric Gregory Award’ (1984) and the ‘C. Day Lewis Fellowship’ in 1982. Duffy also received doctorate degree from the University of Hull, University of Dundee, University of St. Andrews, University of Warwick including a Fellowship from Homerton College, Cambridge. Buy Books by Carol Ann Duffy BBC - GCSE Bitesize English Literature - Carol Ann Duffy: Valentine : Revision Next Context Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955) is a Scottish poet, and is currently the UK’s first female (and first Scottish) Poet Laureate [poet laureate: A poet officially appointed by the government of a country; he or she may be expected to write poems for special national occasions. ] .

Born in Glasgow, she moved with her family to Stafford when she was 7, where she was educated. She wrote poetry from an early age, and was first published at the age of 15. She has since written plays, critical works, and several volumes of poetry. Her poetry has been the subject of controversy. She follows in the poetic tradition of, for example, Robert Browning, in writing monologues from the point of view of disturbed characters. Her poem Education for Leisure caused a huge debate when an exam board decided to withdraw it from an exam syllabus because of a complaint about its contents. Duffy often tackles difficult subjects, encouraging the reader to explore alternative points of view. Duffy’s poetry is often feminist in its themes and approach. Her collection The World’s Wife took characters from history, literature and mythology and gave them a female point of view, as a sister, a wife or a feminised version of a character. Page

Question: Carol Ann Duffy became the UK's first female what?
Answer: Poet Laureate