Carol Ann Duffy

Standard Name: Duffy, Carol Ann
Birth Name: Carol Ann Duffy
CAD , Britain's first woman Poet Laureate, has published thirty books, which as well as poetry include plays, works for young people, and edited anthologies. Early in her career she began winning literary awards and has amassed an impressive number. She now lives by her pen. Her poems are witty, unexpected dramatisations of human situations, attentive to gender issues and to issues of power misused. She alternates personal, even autobiographical poetry with dramatic monologues which assume other voices. Among these voices are the disturbing ones of criminals or psychopaths.
Black and white photograph of Carol Ann Duffy at Humber Mouth literary festival, 2009. She sits with hands folded on a table that is not pictured. She wears a loose jacket with a large lapel, a brooch, and earrings. She looks to her right with a neutral expression, and her hair is curly, falling loose around her shoulders and forehead.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Reception Jo Shapcott
JS was only the second woman to win the Forward Prize (following Carol Ann Duffy and preceding Kathleen Jamie in 1994).
Crown, Sarah. “Forward Prize goes to Kathleen Jamie”. Guardian Unlimited.
A commentator on the this prize described JS 's work as postfeminist, which...
Reception Dorothy Wordsworth
Virginia Woolf published an essay on DW in 1929 (reprinted in the Common Reader: Second Series, 1932). As early as 1940 (in his edition published the following year) Ernest de Selincourt wrote, Dorothy Wordsworth...
Reception Kathleen Jamie
KJ has said that now, having all the time, money (a two-year grant from the Scottish Arts Council ), and confidence she needs, she feels able to say, I'm a poet and this is what...
Reception Kate Clanchy
Some reviewers found the topic unsuitable: in KC 's words, too conservative, or too happy, or, mostly, because it involved me talking about myself. It still offends, it seems, for a mother to talk about...
Material Conditions of Writing Gillian Clarke
GC was one of ten poets gathered by Carol Ann Duffy in spring 2013 to spend two weeks, one in each of ten museums in Cambridge, and to craft a poem relating to the museum...
Literary responses Judith Kazantzis
Harold Pinter called this work beautifully wrought, concrete, and passionate, and also noted that a major political poem was a rare event. Carol Ann Duffy (herself an intensely political poet) observed sardonically: Someone should...
Literary responses Liz Lochhead
LL was the subject of two National Book League pamphlets, in 1978 and again in 1986. She was one of the first four twentieth-century Scottish poets (of a total of twelve) whose busts were placed...
Literary responses Anne Stevenson
The poet Carol Ann Duffy particularly admires this poem; in 2001 she expressed the hope that it might be still in print.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Introduction: Alter Egos: New Writing”. Mslexia, Vol.
8
, pp. 23-4.
24
Literary responses Selima Hill
The publishers of A Little Book of Meat quoted praise from Graham Swift and Carol Ann Duffy .
Literary responses Gillian Allnutt
Lisa Williams detected in this latest collection an increasing severity, evident in sparser, more concentrated stanzas and lines. Yet even as GApeels her poems down to the bone, her rhymes retain a highly lyrical...
Literary responses Kate Clanchy
The back cover quoted Carol Ann Duffy saying: [KC ] has a distinct and, for me, completely fresh way of writing about the relations between men and women.
Clanchy, Kate. Slattern. Chatto & Windus.
back cover
Intertextuality and Influence Emily Dickinson
Because of the extent to which ED 's concentrated and elusive verse, as well as her dissent from religious and social orthodoxies, seem to presage modernism, she has been considered the sole serious writer among...
Intertextuality and Influence Kate Clanchy
KC never cherished any idea of being a writer. She says that it was not until much later in life that she began to think seriously about pursuing her own writing. A long-time poetry reader...
Family and Intimate relationships Jackie Kay
JK met poet Carol Ann Duffy , and they began a relationship which lasted well into the new century.
Kay, Jackie. “My other dad is an African prince”. The Observer, pp. New Review 10 - 13.
Review 12-13
“The Knitting Circle”. London South Bank University: Lesbian and Gay Staff Association.
“Writer’s ’revenge’ on school bullies”. BBC News.
Dedications Jackie Kay
The novel, dedicated to her then partner, the poet Carol Ann Duffy , reworks some of the same material as her early play Twice Over.
Lumsden, Alison et al., editors. “Jackie Kay’s Poetry and Prose: Constructing Identity”. Contemporary Scottish Women Writers, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 79-91.
87
It remains in print in 2012.
Rustin, Susanna. “A Life in Writing. Jackie Kay Interview”. The Guardian, pp. Review 12 - 13.
Review 13

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Duffy, Carol Ann. Selling Manhattan. Anvil Press Poetry, 1987.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “September 2014”. theguardian.com.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Sincerity. Pan Macmillan, 2018.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Standing Female Nude. Anvil Press Poetry, 1985.
Rafferty, Trisha. Stopping for Death. Editor Duffy, Carol Ann, Viking, 1996.
Duffy, Carol Ann. The Bees. Picador, 2011.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “The Gambler”. Poetry Bookshop Online: Poems.
Duffy, Carol Ann. The Other Country. Anvil Press Poetry, 1990.
Duffy, Carol Ann. The Pamphlet. Anvil Press Poetry, 1998.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “The Week in Books”. The Guardian, p. Review 5.
Duffy, Carol Ann. The World’s Wife: Poems. Picador, 1999.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Thrown Voices. Turret Books, 1986.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. Time’s Tidings. Anvil Press Poetry, 1999.
Duffy, Carol Ann. William and the Ex-Prime Minister. Anvil Press Poetry, 1992.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Winning Poets”. Mslexia, No. 38, pp. 31-3.