Carol Ann Duffy facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL
Duffy in June 2009
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
In office 1 May 2009 – 10 May 2019
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Andrew Motion
Succeeded by	Simon Armitage
Personal details
Born	(1955-12-23) 23 December 1955 (age 69) Glasgow, Scotland
Children	1
Alma mater	University of Liverpool (B.A. Hons, Philosophy)
Occupation	Poet, playwright

Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a famous Scottish poet and writer of plays. She is a professor of modern poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. From May 2009 to May 2019, she held the special title of Poet Laureate. This means she was the official poet for the UK.

Carol Ann Duffy was the first woman to be Poet Laureate. She was also the first Poet Laureate born in Scotland. Her poetry collections include Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award. Her book Mean Time (1993) won the Whitbread Poetry Award. Her collection Rapture (2005) won the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems often talk about important topics like fairness and how people are treated. She uses language that is easy to understand.

Early Life and Education

Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 23 December 1955. She grew up in a Roman Catholic family in an area called the Gorbals. Her father, Frank Duffy, worked with electricity. Her mother was Mary Black. Her family had Irish roots. Carol Ann was the oldest of five children and has four brothers.

When she was six years old, her family moved to Stafford, England. Her father worked for English Electric. He was also involved in trade unions and managed Stafford Football Club.

Carol Ann Duffy went to school in Stafford. She attended Saint Austin's RC Primary School, St. Joseph's Convent School, and Stafford Girls' High School. Her English teachers, June Scriven and Jim Walker, really encouraged her writing talent. She loved reading from a young age and wanted to be a writer. She started writing poems when she was 11.

When one of her English teachers passed away, she wrote a poem about it:

You sat on your desk,
swinging your legs,
reading a poem by Yeats
to the bored girls,
except my heart stumbled and blushed
as it fell in love with the words and I saw the tree
in the scratched old desk under my hands,
heard the bird in the oak outside scribble itself on the air.

Poetry Career and Achievements

When Carol Ann Duffy was 15, her teacher sent her poems to a publisher. Some of her poems were then published. At 16, she met Adrian Henri, who was also a poet. She lived with him for ten years. She said he helped her feel more confident.

In 1974, she started studying philosophy at the University of Liverpool. She wanted to be close to Adrian Henri. While there, two of her plays were performed at the Liverpool Playhouse. She also wrote a small book of poems. She earned her degree in philosophy in 1977. In 1983, she won the National Poetry Competition.

From 1988 to 1989, she worked as a poetry critic for The Guardian newspaper. She also edited a poetry magazine called Ambit. In 1996, she became a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Later, she became the creative director of its Writing School.

Becoming Poet Laureate

In 1999, Carol Ann Duffy was considered for the role of Poet Laureate after Ted Hughes died. However, Andrew Motion was chosen instead. Duffy later said she wouldn't have taken the job then anyway. She was busy with her partner, Jackie Kay, and their young daughter. She didn't want the extra public attention at that time. In the same year, she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

On 1 May 2009, Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate. This happened after Andrew Motion's ten-year term ended. She was featured on a TV show called The South Bank Show in December 2009. She also presented the Turner Prize to artist Richard Wright. In 2009, she received an honorary degree from Heriot-Watt University. In 2015, she was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy.

Poems as Poet Laureate

As Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy wrote poems about important events. Her first poem as Laureate was about a scandal involving British politicians' expenses. Her second poem, "Last Post", was written to remember the last British soldiers from World War I.

Her poem "The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009" talked about current issues. These included animals disappearing, climate change, money problems, and the war in Afghanistan. In March 2010, she wrote "Achilles (for David Beckham)". This poem was about the football player David Beckham's injury. It showed how modern famous people are sometimes seen like heroes from old myths.

She also wrote "Silver Lining" in April 2010. This poem was about flights being stopped because of ash from an Icelandic volcano. In August 2010, she shared her poem "Vigil" at the Manchester Pride event. This poem remembered LGBTQ people who had died from HIV/AIDS.

For the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, Duffy wrote a poem called "Rings". This poem celebrated rings found in nature and didn't mention the couple's names directly. She also wrote "The Throne" for the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

Duffy said that being Poet Laureate didn't have many rules. She was happy to write poems when asked. She also shared that she met Queen Elizabeth II and they talked about poetry. Queen Elizabeth II's mother was friends with Ted Hughes, another poet Duffy admired.

Carol Ann Duffy finished her term as Poet Laureate in May 2019.

Poetry Style and Themes

Duffy's poems explore everyday life and people's imaginations. She writes about childhood, growing up, and adult life. She finds comfort in love, memories, and language. A writer named Charlotte Mendelson said that Duffy is very good at using different voices in her poems. She can move between characters' lives easily. She also travels through time and space in her poems, making it seem simple.

Duffy has said that she likes to use simple words in a clever way. She tries to show a truth in each poem. Her poem "Whoever She Was" won the Poetry Society National Poetry Competition in 1983.

In her first collection, Standing Female ... (1985), she uses the voices of people who feel like outsiders. Her book Feminine Gospels (2002) continued this style. It showed her interest in longer story poems that were easy to read and often had dream-like images. Her 2005 book, Rapture, is a collection of poems about a love story. For this, she won the £10,000 T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2007, she published The Hat, which is a collection of poems for children.

Poetry in Schools

Carol Ann Duffy's poems are studied in British schools. In August 2008, her poem "Education for Leisure" was removed from a school textbook. This happened after someone complained about it mentioning knife crime and a goldfish being flushed down a toilet. The poem starts: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything./I have had enough of being ignored and today/I am going to play God."

Duffy said the decision to remove the poem was "ridiculous." She explained that it was an anti-violence poem. She said it was "a plea for education rather than violence." She wrote another poem called "Mrs Schofield's GCSE" in response. This poem talked about violence in other stories and why it's important to understand it.

Anthologise Competition for Schools

In 2011, Carol Ann Duffy started a new poetry competition for schools called Anthologise. The competition was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall. Students aged 11–18 from across the UK could create and submit their own collections of published poems. The first winners were students from Monkton Combe School in Bath. Their collection was called The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead. Duffy said it was "assured and accomplished."

Plays and Songs

Carol Ann Duffy is also a playwright. Her plays have been performed in theatres like the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London. Some of her plays include Take My Husband (1982) and Casanova (2007). She has also adapted her poetry collection Rapture for radio.

She has written children's books of poetry, such as Meeting Midnight (1999) and The Oldest Girl in the World (2000). She worked with composer Sasha Johnson Manning on The Manchester Carols. These are Christmas songs that were first performed in Manchester Cathedral in 2007.

In 2011, she wrote a piece for the Bush Theatre's project Sixty-Six Books. This project was based on books from the King James Bible. In 2015, a modern version of the old play Everyman was performed at the Royal National Theatre. Carol Ann Duffy wrote this new version.

Personal Life

When she was 16, Carol Ann Duffy started a relationship with poet Adrian Henri. They lived together until 1982. Later, Duffy met poet Jackie Kay, and they were partners for 15 years. Carol Ann Duffy has a daughter named Ella, who was born in 1995. Ella's biological father is poet Peter Benson.

Duffy was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but she became an atheist at 15. However, she has said that her religious upbringing influenced her poetry. She believes that "Poetry and prayer are very similar."

Awards and Recognition

Carol Ann Duffy has received many awards and honors for her work. She has honorary doctorates from several universities, including the University of Dundee and the University of Warwick.

Some of her notable awards include:

• 1983: National Poetry Competition 1st prize
• 1986: Scottish Arts Council Book Award
• 1988: Somerset Maugham Award
• 1993: Whitbread Awards
• 1993: Forward Prize
• 1999: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2005: T. S. Eliot Prize
• 2011: Costa Book Awards (Poetry) for The Bees
• 2012: PEN Pinter Prize
• 2015: Elected as an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy
• 2021: Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Laureate

She has also received special honors from the British Empire. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995. Then, she became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002. In 2015, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contributions to poetry.

Works

Carol Ann Duffy has written many poetry collections, plays, and children's books. Here are some of her works:

• 1982: Fifth Last Song (poetry)
• 1982: Take My Husband (play)
• 1984: Cavern of Dreams (play)
• 1985: Standing Female ... (poetry)
• 1986: Little Women, Big Boys (play)
• 1987: Selling Manhattan (poetry)
• 1990: The Other Country (poetry)
• 1993: Mean Time (poetry)
• 1996: Grimm Tales (play)
• 1999: Meeting Midnight (children's poetry)
• 1999: The World's Wife (poetry)
• 2000: The Oldest Girl in the World (children's poetry)
• 2002: Feminine Gospels (poetry)
• 2005: Rapture (poetry)
• 2007: The Hat (children's poetry)
• 2007: Casanova (play)
• 2009: New & Collected Poetry for Children (poetry)
• 2011: The Bees (poetry)
• 2018: Sincerity (poetry)

See also

In Spanish: Carol Ann Duffy para niños