Dame Carol Ann Duffy, DBE

Poet Laureate

Carol Ann Duffy became Britain’s first female poet laureate in 2009 and her first poem under her new mantle, Politics, was a sonnet attacking the MPs’ expenses scandal of the same year. Born in an underprivileged area of Glasgow, Duffy began crafting her own poetry aged 11 and decided from an early age that she wanted to be a writer. Growing up, she would take her four brothers’ library cards to borrow more books, and later went on to read Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. A new volume of Duffy’s collected poems was published in 2015, and the previous year she commissioned a volume titled Poetry Remembers to commemorate the First World War. Her work has been part of the English GCSE and A-Level syllabi for many years, and she is professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. 

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