Carol Ann Duffy
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Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL |
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Duffy in June 2009
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| Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom | |
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Assumed office 1 May 2009 |
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| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Preceded by | Andrew Motion |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
23 December 1955 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Nationality | British |
| Spouse(s) | Peter Benson |
| Children | Ella (born 1995) |
| Relatives | Mary Black (mother) died 2005 Frank Duffy (father) |
| Education | B.A. (Hons) Philosophy |
| Alma mater | University of Liverpool |
| Occupation | Poet, playwright |
| Awards |
OBE 1995 CBE 2002 DBE 2015 |
Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to hold the position.
Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools.
Carol Ann Duffy was born to a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, a poor part of Glasgow. She was the first child of Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter, and Mary Black. The couple went on to have another four children, all boys. The family moved to Stafford, England, when Duffy was six years old. Her father worked for English Electric. He was a trade unionist, and stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in 1983; he also managed the Stafford Rangers football club in his spare time.
Duffy was educated in Stafford at Saint Austin's RC Primary School (1962–1967), St. Joseph's Convent School (1967–1970), and Stafford Girls' High School (1970–1974), her literary talent encouraged by two English teachers, June Scriven at St Joseph's, and Jim Walker at Stafford Girls' High. She was a passionate reader from an early age, and always wanted to be a writer, producing poems from the age of 11. When one of her English teachers died, she wrote:
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