Books Review: Carol Ann Duffy | Poet Laureate | Middle England | Lesbian | Wendy Cope

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Published: 7 May 2009

Carol Ann Duffy

Duffy’s capacity to amaze

THE simple home truth behind Carol Ann Duffy becoming the first woman poet laureate is that the Prime Minister’s appointments secretary could not afford to recommend a male poet at a time when the post had accurately been called “archaic” by the other favourite woman candidate, Wendy Cope.
In 2009, Carol Ann’s being lesbian made her irresistible to the appointments secretary – unlike 10 years ago.
This shows that Middle England is, rightly, no longer taken into account in any of his deliberations.
There is something irresistible about Carol Ann’s latest book of love poems Rapture (Picador £12.99). It represents a dazzling change of gear from the more mischief-making The World’s Wife. Carol Ann starts her tour as a one-woman show at Edinburgh three months from now.
Carol Ann’s accessibility to thousands of young people, who normally wouldn’t be seen dead on bus or Tube reading any book of poems, can be seen in the first stanza of the title poem of her first book, Standing Female Nude (Anvil Press, 1985). Its trick is so simple to be hardly worth mentioning. It takes readers off their guard straight away:

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.

There are strong shades here of her life with Adrian Henri, the Liverpool poet in the 1960s.
Carol Ann has just published the heartfelt poem about the death last week of her close friend the poet UA Fanthorpe, a former candidate for the poet laureate.
Carol Ann is constantly amazing herself – but not ever for politically correct calculations. She is too compassionate, and shoots too often from the hip to fall into that lethal trap.
John Horder

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