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    Carol Ann Duffy

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    Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright who was born in 1955. She has received numerous honors including being appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, making her the first woman, Scot, and openly LGBT person to hold the position. Duffy's poetry is characterized by its use of everyday language to explore themes of gender, oppression, and social issues through a working class perspective influenced by British politics. Some of her notable poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985) and The World's Wife (1999).

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    Carol Ann Duffy

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    BeatrizYV
    427 views18 pages
    Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright who was born in 1955. She has received numerous honors including being appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, making her the first woman, Scot, and openly LGBT person to hold the position. Duffy's poetry is characterized by its use of everyday language to explore themes of gender, oppression, and social issues through a working class perspective influenced by British politics. Some of her notable poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985) and The World's Wife (1999).

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    Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright who was born in 1955. She has received numerous honors including being appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, making her the first woman, Scot, and openly LGBT person to hold the position. Duffy's poetry is characterized by its use of everyday language to explore themes of gender, oppression, and social issues through a working class perspective influenced by British politics. Some of her notable poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985) and The World's Wife (1999).

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    427 views18 pages

    Carol Ann Duffy

    Uploaded by

    BeatrizYV
    Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright who was born in 1955. She has received numerous honors including being appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate in 2009, making her the first woman, Scot, and openly LGBT person to hold the position. Duffy's poetry is characterized by its use of everyday language to explore themes of gender, oppression, and social issues through a working class perspective influenced by British politics. Some of her notable poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985) and The World's Wife (1999).

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    of 18

    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,

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