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Carol Ann Duffy Quotes

born 1955 Scotland

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.

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Random Carol Ann Duffy quote

11 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.

What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love?

All I know is this:
he went out for his walk a man
and came home female.

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.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I cannot say where you are. Unreachable
by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable
in the air, even if souls are stars.

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.

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.

The eyes were the same.
But in the shocking V of the shirt were breasts.
When he uttered my name in a woman’s voice I passed out.

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.

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

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Carol Ann Duffy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.