Carol Ann Duffy will be the UK’s first woman poet laureate!

null

From Yahoo News:

The centuries-old post of British poet laureate, bard to kings and queens, has been held by William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Ted Hughes : but never, until Friday, by a woman.

Carol Ann Duffy said she hesitated before accepting the job, which brings a high public profile and an expectation to rhapsodize about royal weddings, funerals and major state occasions.

In the end, she left the decision to her 13-year-old daughter, Ella: “She said, ‘Yes mummy, there’s never been a woman.'”

Duffy, 53, said that as laureate she would write “whatever needs to be written.”

She said poetry “is a place we can go to for comfort, celebration, when we’re in love, when we’re bereaved and sometimes for events that happen to us as a nation.”

A witty and popular writer whose work is widely taught in British schools, Duffy is also the first openly gay poet laureate.

Share
This entry was posted in Feminism and Culture, Firsts, LGBT Rights. Bookmark the permalink.