Duffy, Carol Ann (1955-…), a British poet and playwright, became the first female poet laureate of the United Kingdom. Duffy received the 10-year appointment in 2009. Duffy’s writings include moving love poems and commentary on the contemporary, multicultural society of the United Kingdom. Duffy’s work, which has received much critical acclaim, includes collections of her own poetry for adults and young people, anthologies of work by other poets, and plays for stage and radio.
Duffy’s first major collection of poetry, Standing Female Nude, was published in 1985. It includes poems written as dramatic monologues by a wide range of voices. Duffy used this form extensively in her later poetry. The speakers in these monologues are often outsiders, from a culturally alienated group in society. The poems use dramatic irony, humor, and realism.
Duffy’s later collections of poems include Thrown Voices (1986), Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990), and Mean Time (1993), which won both the Whitbread (now Costa) and Forward prizes for poetry in 1993. The World’s Wife, published in 1999, is a collection of 30 poems portraying real and fictional female characters. New Selected Poems (2004) collects poems Duffy wrote from 1985 to 2003. Duffy edited an anthology of poems by 50 poets on the theme of time called Time’s Tiding (1999), to celebrate the new millennium.
Duffy’s writing for young people includes adaptations of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, titled Grimm Tales (1996) and Rumpelstiltskin and Other Grimm Tales (1999). She also wrote the original children’s stories The Princess’s Blankets (2009) and The Gift (2010). Duffy edited two anthologies of poems for teenagers: Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss (1996), which was awarded the Signal Poetry Award in 1997, and I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists (1992).
Duffy’s plays include Loss (1986), a monologue for radio, and Little Women, Big Boys (1986), written for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow on Dec. 23, 1955, and grew up in Stafford. She attended Liverpool University, graduating in philosophy in 1977. Duffy became an editor of Ambit poetry journal in 1983. In 1999, she was appointed to the staff of the writing school in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University, England. Duffy received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1988 and the Dylan Thomas Award in 1990. She was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London, in 1999. Duffy was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1995.
