Carol Ann Duffy

Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL
Duffy in June 2009
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
In office 1 May 2009 – 10 May 2019
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Andrew Motion
Succeeded by	Simon Armitage
Personal details
Born	(1955-12-23) 23 December 1955 (age 68)[1] Glasgow, Scotland
Children	1[2]
Alma mater	University of Liverpool (B.A. Hons, Philosophy)
Occupation	Poet, playwright

Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE FRSL HonFBA HonFRSE (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish^[3] poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009,^[4] and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.^[5]

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in accessible language.^[6]