Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright, born in 1955 in Glasgow and raised in Staffordshire, England. She studied philosophy at the University of Liverpool, where she was part of the city's active underground poetry scene during the 1970s. In 2009 she became the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to be appointed UK Poet Laureate, a role she held until 2019.

Duffy's poetry is known for its colloquial, sharply observed lyricism and its frequent use of dramatic monologue to give voice to overlooked or marginalized figures. Her breakthrough collection, Standing Female Nude, established an anti-establishment, keenly political voice. She reached a much wider readership with The World's Wife, a collection reimagining myths, fairy tales, and history from female perspectives, including figures like Medusa and Mrs Midas.

Her later work, including the collection Rapture, which won the T. S. Eliot Prize, explored love and loss with striking intimacy. Duffy has also written extensively for children and for the stage, and her poems remain widely studied on school curricula across the UK, admired for combining accessibility with formal precision and emotional depth.