Life
1955- [Dame Carol Ann Duffy]; b. 23 Dec., Glasgow Gorbals and grew up in Staffordshire; of Irish extraction on both sides - her mother Mary (née Black) being of irish parents and her father Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter, being the grandson of Irish migrants to Scotland; ed. St. Joseph's Convent School; moved in with Adrian Henri at 16, remaining with him until 1982; later met Jackie Kay, also a poet, with whom her relationship lasted 15 years up to 2004; a child born to them was fathered by Peter Benson; studied Philosophy at Univ of Liverpool, where Henri taught; won the National Poetry Competition for 1983; ed. Ambit magazine;
her collections incl. Standing Female Nude (1985), Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990) and Mean Time (1993) - winner of the Forward Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award; The World's Wife (1999); Little Red-cap (1999); feminine gospels (Picador 2003) [see note]; Rapture (2005), winner of T. S. Eliot Prize; The Tear Thief (2007); Love Poems (2009); The Bees (2017), winner of the Costa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; Christmas Poems (2021); Empty Nest: Poems for Families (2021);
For children: The Gift (2010), New and Collected Poems for Children (2009), and The Hat (2007). Anthologies: ed. Anvil New Poets 2 (1995), 166pp.; To the Moon: An Anthology of Lunar Poems (2009) and Answering Back (2009).
her Selected Poems appeared from Penguin in 1995 (rep. Penguin Global, 2009); winner of num. awards ncl. the Somerset Maugham Award, the Signal Prize for Children’s Verse, and the Forward Prize for Poetry; made made OBE in 1995 and CBE in 2001; elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999; considered for poet laureateship by Tony Blair on death of Ted Hughes but ultimately passed over; won National Lottery prize of £75K; moved from Manchester to London in 1996; appt. to chair of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University; appt. poet Laureate, 2009, succeeding Andrew Motion; issued her Collected Poems (2015);
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Works
[as in Life - supra].
See also Selected Poems (Penguin 1995), 151pp.; The Salmon Carol Ann Duffy: Selected Poems (Salmon 1996); New Selected Poems (Pan Macmillan 2011), 288pp. Her feminine gospels (2003), is reviewed by Kit Fryatt in Metre, 13 (Winter 2002-2003).
Access: 17 poems are available at Scribd [online] - including poems from Standing Female Nude [2], Selling Manhattan [5], The Other Country [2], Mean Time [2], Feminine Gospels [sic; 4]; The Bees [1]; The World's Wife [1]. Tip: Click away advertisements to view each poem.
Note: there is a lively Poetry Foundation page with critical biography and poems [“Warming Her Pearls” and “Little Red-cap” - online.
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Notes
feminine gospels (2003): ‘A new collection of poems ranging over the experience of women - historical and imagined, real-life and larger than life - from the award-winning author of The World’s Wife. From the sadness of Elizabeth I, looking back on her long and powerful but lonely life, to the travails of a woman whose work is literally never done as she continues to trawl the seas to feed her billion offspring, to a movingly lyrical reflection on the beauty of a growing child, Carol Ann Duffy explores in this volume the myriad components of women’s lives and loves through the crystallizing prism of poetry. Sometimes erotic and personal, sometimes historical and grand, sometimes witty and full of surprises, the poems in Feminine Gospels are all beautifully crafted works that are as varied in style as the poems in Duffy’s earlier acclaimed volume The World’s Wife. Together, they will challenge and entertain as they explore the fullness of the female condition through their author’s unique poetic voice.’ (Publisher’s notice at Internet Archive - online; accessed 31.12.2024.)
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