Today's Out Spotlight is Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate of Great Britain, who is not only is the first woman laureate, she is the first Scot, the first mother, and the first lesbian in it's 341 year history.
Carol Ann Duffy, is a poet, playwright, and freelance writer, Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University and Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School, in the university's Department of English.
Born December 23 1955, in Glasgow, the oldest child of Frank Duffy and May Black, and the only girl to four boys. she moved to Stafford, England when she was six, her father working as a fitter for English Electric. Her father also ran as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party and managed Stafford Rangers football club in his spare time. Raised a Roman Catholic, she was educated at Saint Austin's Roman Catholic Primary School, St. Joseph's Convent School ) and Stafford Girls' High School - where her literary talent was encouraged by English master J. A. Walker. She was also influenced by the 'Liverpool poet' Adrian Henri.
Duffy was a passionate reader from an early age, and she always wanted to be a writer. "She began writing poems when she was 11; when her English teacher died. She began publishing her poetry at 16. Many of her poems reflect on time, change, and loss." In dramatizing scenes of childhood, adolescence, and adult life, whether personal or public, contemporary or historical, she discovers moments of consolation through love, memory, and language. She explores not only everyday experience, but also the rich fantasy life of herself and others.
The origins of Britain's poet laureateship are hazy, but it is believed by many that Ben Jonson was the first to hold the position; the role (along with a pension of 100 marks a year) was conferred on him by James I. Other laureates include William Wordsworth, Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, Cecil Day-Lewis and John Betjeman.
With a such a rich history of poets, and the gravity of the position, Duffy thought long and hard about accepting the offer.
"The decision was purely because they hadn't had a woman," she said. "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing, like Alice Oswald" and for all the women considered for the laureateship over the years, the first, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1850, when Wordsworth died, but Tennyson was chosen instead. Forty-two years later, Christina Rossetti was overlooked upon Tennyson's death, and rather than appoint a woman to the position it was left vacant until Alfred Austin, viewed today as one of the worst ever laureates,was appointed.
Taking the position, Duffy said she was ready to deal with the scrutiny which comes with it, suggesting that her experience as one of Britain's popular modern poets would be beneficial, but that she would vigorously defend her private life.
Duffy, narrowly missed out on the laureateship to her friend Andrew Motion in 1999 after the death of Ted Hughes, who had held the post since 1984, but her friend Motion was eventually offered the role. It was widely speculated at the time, based on remarks from a Blair staffer that Duffy was passed over in part because Blair was concerned about how Duffy's sexuality would go over with the public. Others saying she was reluctant as well to take up the prominent role given her status as a mother in a lesbian relationship. Duffy has a 13-year-old daughter, Ella, and ended a 10-year relationship with Scottish poet Jackie Kay a few years ago.
At the time, Duffy told the Guardian that she "didn't want to do the thing", but when "all these stories started appearing, I got scores of letters from women saying do it, do it, do it. But I was never really sure. I never really came out and said whether I wanted it or not." Quoted as saying that the role needed to be "much more democratic", being more the people's poet than monarch's, and that she would "not write a poem for Edward and Sophie - no self-respecting poet should have to", she'd actually backed the late UA Fanthorpe for the post.
This time, she declared herself ready to tackle the official verse which the laureateship requires, but only if the occasion inspired her. "If not, then I'd ignore it," she said.
She plans to donate her yearly stipend of £5,750 to the Poetry Society to fund a new poetry prize for the best annual collection. "I didn't want to take on what basically is an honor on behalf of other poets and complicate it with money," she explained. "I thought it was better to give it back to poetry." However, she did asked that her "butt of sack" – 600 bottles of sherry traditionally given to the laureate – be delivered up front, after learning that her predecessor Motion has yet to receive his payment.
One of the bestselling poets in the UK, she has managed to combine critical acclaim with popularity: a rare feat in the poetry world. Her 1999 collection The World's Wife, which saw every poem told in the voice of a wife of a great historical figure, from Mrs Aesop to Queen Herod, was the first to gain her mass appeal.
Duffy received the OBE in 1995 and went on to add a CBE in 2002. She won the TS Eliot prize in 2005 for her collection of linked love poems, Rapture. She has also won the Dylan Thomas award, the Whitbread poetry prize, the Somerset Maugham award and the Forward prize, and features regularly on school and university syllabuses.
“If I am a lesbian icon and a role model, that’s great, but if it’s a word that is used to reduce me, then you have to ask why someone would want to reduce me.” She said she preferred to define herself as “a poet and a mother — that’s all.”
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