Academic

After Just 341 Years, Britain Poet Laureate Is A Woman

By Kathleen Bergin

She is  Carol Ann Duffy, a poet, playwrite, and children’s author, originally from Glasgow, Scotland.

From the New York Times:

Ms. Duffy, 53, is known for using a deceptively simple style to produce accessible, often mischievous poems dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life. In her most popular collection, ?The World?s Wife? (1999), overlooked women in history and mythology get the chance to tell their side of the story, so that one poem imagines, for instance, the relief that Mrs. Rip Van Winkle must have felt when her husband fell asleep, finally giving her some time for herself.

Ms. Duffy also had a relationship for several years with Scottish poet Jackie Kay, though when it comes to being known as a lesbian poet, she says:

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.?

I don’t know the first thing about poetry, but do have this beauty by Sarah Gilpin taped to my office door.

And for the chuckle, perhaps I’ll add Duffy’s “Mrs. Darwin:”  

7 April 1852
Went to the Zoo
I said to him ? Something about that chimpanzee over there
reminds me of you

-Kathleen Bergin

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on May 02, 2009 (boomark / email).