Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet, playwright, freelance writer and current Poet Laureate, the first woman to hold that title.

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

Quotes

• Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
  and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
  The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
  • Words, Wide Night, from The Other Country (1990).

• Not a red rose or a satin heart.
  I give you an onion.
  It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
  It promises light
  like the careful undressing of love...

  I am trying to be truthful.

  • Valentine, from Mean Time (1993).

• Here.
  It will blind you with tears
  like a lover.
  It will make your reflection
  a wobbling photo of grief.
  • Valentine, from Mean Time (1993).

• Light gatherer. You fell from a star
  into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside
  mirrored in you,
  and now you shine like a snowgirl,
  a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder
  you squeal at and fly in.
  • The Light Gatherer, from Feminine Gospels (2002).

• I cannot say where you are. Unreachable
  by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable
  in the air, even if souls are stars.
  • Death and the Moon, from Feminine Gospels (2002).

• As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets.
  • Interviewed in The Guardian, August 31, 2002.

• What do I have
  to help me, without spell or prayer,
  endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
  the death of love?
  • Over, from Rapture (2005).

• When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light.
  • Interviewed in The Guardian, December 4, 2005. [1]

• There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning
  • Interviewed in The Guardian, December 4, 2005.

Standing Female Nude (1985)

• Six hours like this for a few francs.
  Belly nipple arse in the window light,
  he drains the colour from me. Further to the right,
  Madame. And do try to be still.
  I shall be represented analytically and hung
  in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo
  at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art.
  • Standing Female Nude.

• This is the word tightrope. Now imagine
  a man, inching across it in the space
  between our thoughts. He holds our breath.

  There is no word net.

  You want him to fall, don't you?
  I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds.
  The word applause is written all over him.

  • Talent.

• One saw I was alive. Loosened
  his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
  Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
  The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
  this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.
  • Shooting Stars.