Carol Ann Duffy became the UK's first female what?
Carol Ann Duffy Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy HonFBA HonFRSE (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May 2009. She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly gay or bisexual poet to hold the position. Her collections include "Standing Female Nude" (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; "Selling Manhattan" (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; "Mean Time" (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and "Rapture" (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot
Carol Ann Duffy Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools. Carol Ann Duffy was born to a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, a poor part of Glasgow. She was the first child of Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter, and Mary Black. The couple went on to have another four children, all boys. The family moved to Stafford, England, when Duffy was six years old. Her father worked for English Electric. He was a trade unionist, and stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in