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
Anthologization Liz Lochhead
As well as reading her poetry at festivals and other venues, LL has selected and edited for Mslexia magazine in early 2004 a number of stories and poems on the theme of ice.
Lochhead, Liz. “Ice”. Mslexia, Vol.
20
, Jan. 2004, pp. 26-7.
26ff
Her...
Anthologization Eavan Boland
EB was published in Volume 2 of the Penguin Modern Poets series (the second series, which began this year and ran until 1997), together with Carol Ann Duffy and Vicki Feaver .
The first Penguin...
Anthologization Gillian Clarke
In 2013 Candlestick Press of Nottingham published as one of its poetry pamphlets CG's selectedTen Poems from Wales, range from the seventh to the twenty-first centuries and including a couple of unpublished pieces...
death U. A. Fanthorpe
UAF died in a hospice near Wotton-under-Edge the day before the announcement that Carol Ann Duffy had been appointed first woman Poet Laureate, an honour that Duffy had wished Fanthorpe to have.
“British poet UA Fanthorpe dies”. BBC News, 30 Apr. 2009.
Kennedy, Maev. “UA Fanthorpe, poet of the critics and public alike, dies aged 79”. The Guardian, 30 Apr. 2009.
Flood, Alison. “Carol Ann Duffy becomes first female poet laureate”. The Guardian, 1 May 2009.
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, 2000, pp. 79-91.
87
It remains in print in 2012.
Rustin, Susanna. “A Life in Writing. Jackie Kay Interview”. The Guardian, 27 Apr. 2012, pp. Review 12 - 13.
Review 13
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, 23 May 2010, 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, 12 Jan. 2002.
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...
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...
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
, 1 Dec.–May 2001, pp. 23-4.
24
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 Alice Oswald
Twenty years later Carol Ann Duffy recalled buying this book for her daughter; it helped form her early conviction that Oswald is the best UK poet now writing, bar none.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Carol Ann Duffy: ‘I wish I’d written Harry Potter, obvs’”. The Guardian, 8 June 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/08/carol-ann-duffy-wish-i-d-written-harry-potter.
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.
qtd. in
Clanchy, Kate. Slattern. Chatto & Windus, 1995.
back cover
Literary responses Selima Hill
The publishers of A Little Book of Meat quoted praise from Graham Swift and Carol Ann Duffy .
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...

Timeline

1968: Peter Jay founded Anvil Press Poetry, which...

Writing climate item

1968

Peter Jay founded Anvil Press Poetry , which by the early twenty-first century was based in Greenwich in south-east London, and described itself as England's longest-standing independent poetry publisher.
Anvil Press Poetry. http://www.anvilpresspoetry.com/.

1998-9: In a league table of sales in verse for these...

Writing climate item

1998-9

In a league table of sales in verse for these years, published by the Guardian in October 2000, Ted Hughes was the highest with 172,174, Seamus Heaney second with 34,690, and Carol Ann Duffy third...

26 November 1998: Poems written, read, and discussed by Kathleen...

Women writers item

26 November 1998

Poems written, read, and discussed by Kathleen Jamie , Jackie Kay , and two male poets were issued as number one in the audio-cassette series Poetry Quartets.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.

23 September 2005: A commission from The Guardian to established...

Women writers item

23 September 2005

A commission from The Guardian to established poets to write a contemporary nursery rhyme produced mostly little pieces about doom and gloom.
“Are you sitting comfortably?”. Guardian Unlimited, 23 Sept. 2005.

20 September 2006: At a round table at Edmonton, Alberta, five...

Writing climate item

20 September 2006

At a round table at Edmonton, Alberta, five poets laureates (of two Canadian cities, one Canadian province, Canada itself, and the District of Columbia, USA—all, as it happened, women) debated the issues of laureateship.
“Forum: Poetry, Private and Public”. Edmonton Poetry Festival.

26 September 2009: The Guardian newspaper carried a number of...

Building item

26 September 2009

The Guardian newspaper carried a number of poems and short prose pieces commissioned in support of the 10:10 initiative to reduce carbon emissions.
“10:10 Review climate change special”. The Guardian, 26 Sept. 2009.

November 2015: A death sentence was passed in Saudi Arabia...

National or international item

November 2015

A death sentence was passed in Saudi Arabia on Ashraf Fayadh , a Palestinian poet, for blasphemy and renouncing Islam , crimes allegedly committed both in poetry and in coffee-house conversation.
“Poets appalled by Saudi death sentence”. Guardian Weekly, 4 Dec. 2015, p. 3.

20 June to 7 July 2016: British poets Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke,...

Building item

20 June to 7 July 2016

British poets Carol Ann Duffy , Gillian Clarke , Imtiaz Dharker , and Jackie Kay , and musician John Sampson , went on a Shore to Shore Nationwide Poetry Tour .
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Five poets go on tour: Carol Ann Duffy’s travel diary begins”. theguardian.com, 20 June 2016.

Texts

Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. 1914: Poetry Remembers. Faber and Faber, 2013.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “A royal wedding poem by Carol Ann Duffy”. theguardian.com.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. Anvil New Poets 2. Anvil Press Poetry, 1994.
Duffy, Carol Ann, and Adrian Henri. Beauty and the Beast. Glasshouse Press, 1977.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Carol Ann Duffy: ‘I wish I’d written Harry Potter, obvs’”. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/08/carol-ann-duffy-wish-i-d-written-harry-potter.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Carols for Christmas”. The Guardian, pp. Review 2 - 4.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. “Exit Wounds”. The Guardian, pp. Review 2 - 4.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Fifth Last Song: Twenty-One Love Poems. Headland, 1982.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Five poets go on tour: Carol Ann Duffy’s travel diary begins”. theguardian.com.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Fleshweathercock, and Other Poems. Outposts, 1973.
Adcock, Fleur et al. Fleur Adcock, Carol Ann Duffy, Selima Hill, Carol Rumens. British Council; Bloodaxe Books, 2 sound cassettes.
Duffy, Carol Ann et al. Grimm Tales. Faber and Faber, 1996.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. Hand in Hand. Picador, 2001.
Rafferty, Trisha. I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine. Editor Duffy, Carol Ann, Viking, 1992.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Introduction: Alter Egos: New Writing”. Mslexia, Vol.
8
, pp. 23-4.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. Jubilee Lines. Faber, 2012.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Mean Time. Anvil Press Poetry, 1993.
Duffy, Carol Ann, and Eileen Cooper. Meeting Midnight. Faber, 1999.
Duffy, Carol Ann, editor. Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse. Picador, 2018.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Pathway”. theguardian.com.
Duffy, Carol Ann et al. Penguin Modern Poets. Penguin, 1995.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Poets’ tour: reaching the ’unsure shore’”. theguardian.com.
Duffy, Carol Ann. “Politics”. The Guardian.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Rapture. Pan Macmillan, 2005.
Duffy, Carol Ann. Ritual Lighting: Laureate Poems. Pan Macmillan Picador, 2014.