Carol Ann Duffy: a beginner’s guide

Tuesday, January 17th, 2006

Carol Ann Duffy is a poet, playwright and freelance writer who has just won the TS Eliot Prize of £10,000 for her latest collection, Rapture, which was published in 2005. You can read the BBC News article here. I thought some of you might be interested in finding out more about her. She is one of my MA tutors.

Biography

Born on 23 December 1955 in Glasgow, Carol Ann Duffy read philosophy at Liverpool University. She is a former editor of the poetry magazine Ambit and is a regular reviewer and broadcaster. She moved from London to Manchester in 1996 and began to lecture in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her papers were acquired by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University in 1999 and in October 2000 she was awarded a grant of £75,000 over a five-year period by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

Her poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); and The World’s Wife (1999). Feminine Gospels (2002) moved away from the dramatic monologues of its predecessor (save for one poem, Sub) and instead consisted of a series of narrative poems exploring a variety of women’s lives and stories.

Carol Ann Duffy has also gained acclaim as an editor. In Out of Fashion (2004) she created what the British Council Contemporary Writers webpage about her describes as ‘a vital dialogue between classic and contemporary poets over the two arts of poetry and fashion’. She has also had plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London. Her plays include Take My Husband (1982), Cavern of Dreams (1984), Little Women, Big Boys (1986) and Loss (1986), a radio play. She received an Eric Gregory Award in 1984 and a Cholmondeley Award in 1992 from the Society of Authors, the Dylan Thomas Award from the Poetry Society in 1989 and a Lannan Literary Award from the Lannan Foundation (USA) in 1995. She was awarded an OBE in 1995, a CBE in 2001 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.

Overview

Carol Ann Duffy is a poet whose concerns are many, and presented using a wide range of techniques but always with an eye for the commonality of human experience. While hugely accessible, this is not to say her poetry lacks complexity – far from it. Her ability to engage with important philosophical and political issues of the day, her use of humour and wit, her responsiveness to the lives of the isolated and the oppressed, all clearly point to a poet willing to cover topics at times discomforting and disturbing while also proving herself able to write entertaining and very moving dramatic monologues and narration in verse form. Proving herself compassionately left-wing throughout her body of work, Duffy is no establishment poet; the furore over the appointment of the Poet Laureate saw a number of tabloid newspapers presenting her as a dangerously deviant revolutionary working against authority, which some might argue to be hugely complementary as statements go, and definitely in her favour if change had been sought after in terms of how the role of Poet Laureate was operated.

The turn-of-the-century controversy did nothing to undermine Duffy’s position as one of the most popular poets writing today. Part of the reason for this is her use of the dramatic monologue in particular, demonstrating time and time again that she has an acute ear for the voices of the people (and, sometimes, animals) she represents in her work, be they child murderers or painters’ models, famous figures from antiquity such as Helen of Troy or the anonymous and lonely. And then there are the (apparently) reincarnating cats and the entrapped dolphins.

Although Duffy’s poetic voice is decidedly modern and distinctive, she seems very much aware of the heritage of English, American and European poetry. She owes a debt to Robert Browning (1812-89) and his use of the dramatic monologue, while she has acknowledged John Keats (1795-1821) as an early interest who she consciously tried to imitate when she was very young. It is in her sensualism that we can see an affinity with him. Sylvia Plath’s control of language and use of imagery made a lasting impact, while Adrienne Rich’s radicalism led by example when it came to Duffy’s own emerging feminist position. WH Auden’s (1907-73) versatile use of poetic forms appealed to her greatly, while Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was admired for his technical mastery and acute observations. TS Eliot is remarked upon by many critics as being perhaps the most powerful poetic influence upon Duffy, particularly through his use of vers libre (free verse) combined with dramatic monologue.

Duffy’s work at times deals with the limitations as well as the possibilities of language, which at first consideration may be expected in a poet but she frequently draws attention to the inability of language to convey what people want to express. She is preoccupied with truth, also. Her inclusion in anthologies devoted to twentieth century poets seems somewhat premature when you consider the impact she continues to have, as evidenced by her winning the TS Eliot Prize for Rapture (2005) only this week. Time will tell whether Duffy is to be classed as belonging primarily to this century, or the last, but one thing is certain: she has already earned her place in English literature.

Poems, Forms & Themes

These are just a few which crop up time and time again in discursive essays, critical guides, and so on: The Grammar of Light, Small Female Skull, Standing Female Nude, Anne Hathaway, Psychopath, Warming Her Pearls. There are many, many more. As Peter Forbes wrote in his critique of Duffy’s work for The British Council, ‘any poet who can write six poems that lodge in the collective memory is going to last as a poet, and Carol Ann Duffy has already achieved that’.

Much is made of Carol Ann Duffy’s ability to use traditional forms, especially the sonnet and she makes use of the dramatic monologue to adopt a multitude of personas to great effect. Themes covered in her poetry (and which often overlap) include childhood, memory, love, relationships, sexuality, time, politics, and language itself.

Further Information

You can find an incredibly detailed biography and bibliography by going here, where you will find lots of interesting quotes from reviewers as well as scurrilous newspaper headlines dating back to when there was public discussion and debate over who would become the next Poet Laureate. This page covers the furore before, and after, the appointment was made in favour of Andrew Motion, which many argue reinforced the perception of the Poet Laureate as being a job only open to white, male, traditionalist poets willing to write nice poems for the Queen. But then, Motion has since been one of the driving forces behind the Poetry Archive being set up which is a brilliant resource for everyone who loves poetry.

categories: creative