Duffy, Carol Ann (1955– )

Scottish poet. Her poems deal passionately with loss, betrayal, and love, and she brings to life domestic scenes from childhood and adolescence. She has won several awards, including first prize in the 1983 National Poetry Competition, the Scottish Arts Council Awards of Merit for her first collection of poems, Standing Female Nude (1985), the Whitbread Poetry Award and Forward Poetry Prize for Mean Time (1993), and the T S Eliot Prize for Rapture (2005).

Duffy juggles language to achieve surprising and interesting results. Other collections include Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990), The World's Wife (1999), and Feminine Gospels (2002). She has also published several volumes of poetry for children, including The Good Child's Guide to Rock and Roll (2003).

She has also edited collections of poems for children, including I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine (1992) and Stopping for Death (1996).

She was born in Glasgow, and has lived in England in Staffordshire, Liverpool (where she attended university), London, and Manchester. She was awarded an OBE in 1995.