Carol Ann Duffy Poet Laureate

Poetry - Professor Francisca Folch Beatriz Yañez

5 November 2015

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

★ Outsider’s 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 mistressbids me wear them, warm them, until eveningwhen I'll brush her hair. At six, I place themround 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 myselfwith 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 (1910)

“Le Grand Nu”Georges Braque (1908)

The World’s 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 bride’s breath soured, stank in the grey bags of my lungs. I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, yellow fanged. There are bullet tears in my eyes. Are you terrified?

Be terrified. It’s you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home.

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 heartand a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful Wasn’t I fragrant and young?

Look at me now.

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.

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 André 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)For both to say I might have raised your hand to the sky

to give you the ring surrounding the

moon

or looked to twin the rings of your eyes

with mine

or added a ring to the rings of a tree

by forming a handheld circle with you,

thee,

or walked with you

where a ring of church-bells,

looped the fields,

or kissed a lipstick ring on your cheek,

a pressed flower,

or met with you

in the ring of an hour,

and another hour . . .

I might

have opened your palm to the weather, turned,

turned,

till your fingers were ringed in rain

or held you close,

they were playing our song,

in the ring of a slow dance

or carved our names

in the rough ring of a heart

or heard the ring of an owl's hoot

as we headed home in the dark

or the ring, first thing,

of chorussing birds

waking the house

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

or the ring of swans, monogamous, two,

or the watery rings made by the fish

as they leaped and splashed

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

I might have tied

a blade of grass,

a green ring for your finger,

or told you the ring of a sonnet by heart

or brought you a lichen ring,

found on a warm wall,

or given a ring of ice in winter

or in the snow

sung with you the five gold rings of a carol

or stolen a ring of your hair

or whispered the word in your ear

that brought us here,

where nothing and no one is wrong,

and therefore I give you this ring.