Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955, Glasgow) is a Scottish poet, playwright, and freelance writer. She is currently Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University and Creative Director of the Creative Writing section of the Department of English. She is currently Poet Laureate, the first woman, the first Scot and the first openly bisexual person to hold the position, as well as the first laureate to be chosen in the 21st century.

Education

Raised a Roman Catholic, she was educated at Saint Austin’s Roman Catholic Primary School, St. Joseph’s Convent School (now a nursing home for old people) and Stafford Girls’ High School – where her literary talent was encouraged by English master J. A. Walker. She was also influenced by the poet Adrian Henri. She was a passionate reader from an early age, and she always wanted to be a writer. In 1977 she received an Honours Degree in Philosophy from the University of Liverpool. She also holds honorary doctorates from the University of Dundee, the University of Hull, the University of St Andrews and the University of Warwick.

Poetry and other Works

Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); The World’s Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; and Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize. The Hat (2007) is her latest poetry collection for children. Previous collections include Meeting Midnight (1999) and The Good Child’s Guide to Rock N Roll (2003).

She also writes picture books for children, and these include Underwater Farmyard (2002); Doris the Giant (2004); Moon Zoo (2005); and The Tear Thief (2007).

Anthologies edited by Carol Ann Duffy include Out of Fashion (2004), in which she creates a vital dialogue between classic and contemporary poets over the two arts of poetry and fashion; and more recently, Answering Back (2007).

Carol Ann Duffy is also an acclaimed playwright, and has had plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London. Her plays include Take My Husband (1982), Cavern of Dreams (1984), Little Women, Big Boys (1986) and Loss (1986), a radio play.

Distinctions

She received an Eric Gregory Award in 1984 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1992 from the Society of Authors, the Dylan Thomas Award from the Poetry Society in 1989 and a Lannan Literary Award from the Lannan Foundation (USA) in 1995. She was awarded an OBE in 1995, a CBE in 2001 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. She was awarded an OBE in 1995, and a CBE in 2002.

References

• http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth104
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ann_Duffy
  
• www.carolannduffy.co.uk