5 November 2015

Carol Ann Duffy

Poet Laureate

Poetry - Professor Francisca Folch

Beatriz Yaez

Who is Carol Ann Duffy?

Scottish poet and playwright. She was born the 23rd of December, 1955.

Demonstrated an early passion for reading and writing, producing poems from the age of 10.

Her literary talent was encouraged by two English teachers and by the poet-artist Adrian
Henri (founder of Liverpool scene).

Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Fellow of the Royal society of
Literature.

She is a Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009: the first woman, the first Scot, and the first
openly LGBT person to hold the position.

As a Poet Laureate: Vigil, Last Post, Achilles, Silver Lining, The Throne, Rings....

In those days, one was still called a "poetess" so it meant

a lot, as a young woman poet, to begin to try to change
that. And, oh girls, just look at us now...
(Poetry Society website)

Awards

Honorary doctorates from the University of Dundee, the University of Hull, the University of St
Andrews, and the University of Warwick.

Honorary Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge.

1983: National Poetry Competition 1st prize (for Whoever She Was)

1983 Greenwich Poetry Competition ("for Words of Absolution")

1984: Eric Gregory Award

1986: Scottish Arts Council Book Award (for Standing Female Nude)

1988: Somerset Maugham Award (for Selling Manhattan)

1989: Dylan Thomas Prize

1990: Scottish Arts Council Book Award (for The Other Country

1992: Cholmondeley Award

1993: Whitbread Awards (for Mean Time)

1993: Scottish Arts Council Book Award (for Mean Time)

1993: Forward Prize (for Mean Time)1995: Lannan Award

1999: Signal Children's Poetry Prize

1999: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

2001: National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts Award

2005: T S Eliot Prize (for Rapture)

2011: Costa Book Awards (Poetry), winner, The Bees

2012 PEN/Pinter Prize

2013: she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by
Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.

Social Context

"Post-post war England: Thatcher's England

1952 Elizabeth II succeeds her father, George VI

1955 Winston Churchill retires as prime minister

1955 Conservatives win the general election (Parliament)

1961 Introduction of the contraceptive pill

1968 Barbara Castle becomes First Secretary of State

1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes first woman Prime Minister

Style

Everyday experiences and fantasy for inspiration.

Dramatic scenes from her childhood, adult life, and idioms in her poetry.

Memory, love and language.

Simple words in a complicated way.

Accessible language that has made them popular in schools.

Influences: British politics, anger towards government, working class.

Her technique is very specific, usually using slang that can catch the reader's attention.

Imagery.

Love poems Monologues

Outsiders perspective

Recurrent Themes

Representation of reality

The construction of self

Gender issues

Contemporary culture

Varying forms of alienation

Oppression and social inequality.

Violence

Violence & Opression

Education for Leisure
Today I am going to kill something. Anything. I have had enough of being
ignored and today I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day, a sort of grey
with boredom stirring in the streets.
Warming Her Pearls
Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

Standing
Female
Nude (1985)

Six hours like this for a few francs.

Belly nipple arse in the window light,
he drains the color from me. Further to the right,
Madame. And do try to be still.
I shall be represented analytically and hung
in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo
at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art.
Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space.
I with the next meal. You're getting thin,
Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang
slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves
I can see the Queen of England gazing
on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs,
moving on. It makes me laugh. His name

is Georges. They tell me he's a genius.

There are times he does not concentrate
and stiffens for my warmth.
He possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush
repeatedly into the paint. Little man,
you've not the money for the arts I sell.
Both poor, we make our living how we can.
I ask him Why do you do this? Because
I have to. There's no choice. Don't talk.
My smile confuses him. These artists
take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself
with wine and dance around the bars. When it's
finished
he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say
Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like
me.

Standing Female Nude Pablo Picasso

Le Grand NuGeorges Braque

The Worlds Wife

(1999)
Medusa

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to
filthy snakes
as though my thoughts
hissed and spat on my scalp.
My brides breath soured, stank
in the grey bags of my lungs.
Im foul mouthed now, foul tongued,
yellow fanged.
There are bullet tears in my eyes.
Are you terrified?
Be terrified.
Its you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know youll go, betray me, stray
from home.

So better by for me if you were stone.

I glanced at a buzzing bee,
a dull grey pebbly fell
to the ground.
I glanced at a singing bird,
a handful of dusty gravel
spattered down
I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit.

I stared in the mirror.

Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.
Fire spewed
from the mouth of a mountain.
And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls.
Wasnt I beautiful
Wasnt I fragrant and young?
Look at me now.

Poet Laureate

Poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution.

Often expected to compose poems for special events and occasions.

The Italians Albertino Mussato and Francesco Petrarca were the first to be crowned poets
laureate after the classical age 1315 and 1342.

+12 national governments.

.Modern times Also conferred by the Poetry Foundation (Children's Poet Laureate).

UK: The term dates from the appointment of Bernard Andr by Henry VII of England.

UK: Appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister.

UK: The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will
write verse for significant national occasions.

Rings (2011)

a pressed flower,

For both to say

in the ring of an hour,

or met with you

I might have raised your hand to the sky

and another hour . . .

to give you the ring surrounding the

I might

moon

have opened your palm to the weather, turned,

or looked to twin the rings of your eyes

turned,

with mine

till your fingers were ringed in rain

or added a ring to the rings of a tree

or held you close,

by forming a handheld circle with you,

they were playing our song,

thee,

in the ring of a slow dance

or walked with you

or carved our names

where a ring of church-bells,

in the rough ring of a heart

or heard the ring of an owl's hoot

as we headed home in the dark

or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart

or the ring, first thing,

or brought you a lichen ring,

of chorussing birds

found on a warm wall,

waking the house

or given a ring of ice in winter

or given the ring of a boat, rowing the lake,

or in the snow

or the ring of swans, monogamous, two,

sung with you the five gold rings of a carol

or the watery rings made by the fish

or stolen a ring of your hair

as they leaped and splashed

or whispered the word in your ear

or the ring of the sun's reflection there . . .

that brought us here,

I might have tied

where nothing and no one is wrong,

a blade of grass,

and therefore I give you this ring.

a green ring for your finger,