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 playwright. She teaches modern poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. From 2009 to 2019, she held the special job of Poet Laureate. This means she was the official poet for the UK. She was the first woman, the first Scottish-born person, and the first openly gay person to have this important role.

Her poems often talk about big ideas like fairness and how people are treated. She writes in a way that is easy to understand.

Early Life and Education

Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in an area called the Gorbals. Her family was Roman Catholic. She was the oldest of five children. When she was six, her family moved to Stafford, England. Her dad worked for a company called English Electric. He also managed a football club!

Carol Ann went to Saint Austin's RC Primary School, St. Joseph's Convent School, and Stafford Girls' High School. Two of her English teachers, June Scriven and Jim Walker, really helped her with her writing. She loved reading from a young age and knew she wanted to be a writer. She started writing poems when she was only 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.

Becoming a Poet

When Carol Ann was 15, her teacher sent her poems to a publisher. A bookseller named Bernard Stone liked them and published some. At 16, she met Adrian Henri, another poet. He really encouraged her writing.

She went to the University of Liverpool and studied philosophy. While there, she had two plays shown at the Liverpool Playhouse. She also wrote a small book of poems. In 1977, she earned her degree. She won the National Poetry Competition in 1983, which was a big achievement!

Later, she worked as a poetry reviewer for The Guardian newspaper. She also edited a poetry magazine called Ambit. In 1996, she became a teacher of poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. She even became the creative director of their Writing School.

Poet Laureate Role

In 1999, Carol Ann Duffy was considered for the Poet Laureate job after Ted Hughes died. But Andrew Motion got the role instead. Carol Ann said she wouldn't have taken it then anyway. She had a young daughter and didn't want so much public attention. In the same year, she became a member of the Royal Society of Literature.

On May 1, 2009, she was finally chosen as the Poet Laureate. She was the first woman to hold this special position! In December 2009, she was featured on a TV show called The South Bank Show. She also presented the Turner Prize to an artist named Richard Wright.

She received an honorary degree from Heriot-Watt University in 2009. 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 Poet Laureate was about a big issue with British politicians' expenses.
• Her second poem, "Last Post", was for the BBC. It honored the last British soldiers from World War I, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, who had passed away.
• Her third poem, "The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009", talked about things like animals disappearing, climate change, money problems, and the war in Afghanistan.
• In 2010, she wrote "Achilles (for David Beckham)". This poem was about the famous football player David Beckham's injury. It showed how modern famous people are sometimes seen like heroes from old myths.
• She wrote "Silver Lining" in 2010 about the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. This ash stopped many flights.
• In August 2010, she read her poem "Vigil" at the Manchester Pride event. This poem remembered LGBTQ people who had died from HIV/AIDS.

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

She 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.

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

Her Poetry Style

Carol Ann Duffy's poems look at everyday life and also at people's imaginations. She often writes about childhood, being a teenager, and adult life. She finds comfort in love, memories, and language.

She once said, "I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way." She also said that in each poem, she tries to show a truth.

Her poem "Whoever She Was" won the Poetry Society National Poetry Competition in 1983. This made her more well-known. Her book Feminine Gospels (2002) has longer poems that are easy to read but often have dream-like images. In 2005, she published Rapture, a collection of poems about a love story. This book won the £10,000 T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2007, she released The Hat, a book of poems for children.

Her Poems in Schools

Many of Carol Ann Duffy's poems are studied in British schools. In 2008, one of her poems, "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."

Carol Ann Duffy thought this decision was silly. She said, "It's an anti-violence poem. It is a plea for education rather than violence." She then wrote another poem called "Mrs Schofield's GCSE" to explain the point of poetry.

Anthologise Competition for Schools

In 2011, Carol Ann Duffy started a new poetry competition for schools called Anthologise. The Duchess of Cornwall launched it. Students aged 11–18 from across the UK could create 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. Carol Ann Duffy said it was "as good as any anthology currently on the bookshelves."

Plays and Songs

Besides poetry, Carol Ann Duffy also writes plays. Some of her plays have been performed in London. Her plays include Take My Husband (1982) and Casanova (2007). She has also written children's books like Meeting Midnight (1999) and The Oldest Girl in the World (2000).

She worked with a composer named Sasha Johnson Manning on The Manchester Carols. These are Christmas songs that were first performed in Manchester Cathedral in 2007.

In 2015, a modern version of an old play called Everyman was performed. Carol Ann Duffy wrote this new version.

Personal Life

Carol Ann Duffy has a daughter named Ella, who was born in 1995.

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

Awards and Honours

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

Some of her awards include:

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

She was also given special titles by the Queen. She became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015. These honours are for her great contributions to poetry.

Works

• 1974: Fleshweathercock and Other Poems
• 1982: Fifth Last Song
• 1987: Selling Manhattan
• 1990: The Other Country
• 1993: Mean Time
• 1999: Meeting Midnight (children's poetry)
• 1999: The World's Wife
• 2000: The Oldest Girl in the World (children's poetry)
• 2002: Feminine Gospels
• 2005: Rapture
• 2007: The Hat (children's poetry)
• 2009: New & Collected Poetry for Children
• 2011: The Bees
• 2018: Sincerity

Images for kids

• 

  Duffy in June 2009

See also

In Spanish: Carol Ann Duffy para niños