Carol Ann Duffy. Wikimedia Commons · see source for licensing.
Poet · Pairing IV
Carol Ann Duffy
b. 1955 · Scottish poet · UK Poet Laureate, 2009–2019
Carol Ann Duffy, born in Glasgow, is one of Britain’s most popular and widely taught contemporary poets. In 2009 she became the UK’s Poet Laureate — the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBTQ poet to hold the role in its centuries-long history.
Her poems are prized for their accessibility, wit, and emotional directness, and for giving voice to speakers — often women — whose perspectives traditional poetry overlooked. She frequently takes a familiar idea and turns it inside out, as in “Valentine,” where she rejects the clichés of romance and offers an onion as a truer, more unsettling symbol of love.
Collections such as Standing Female Nude, Mean Time, and The World’s Wife have made her a mainstay of classrooms and a defining voice in modern British poetry.
In this curriculum
Read her in Pairing IV — Love and Anti-Romance →