Carol Ann Duffy Quotes & Sayings

Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries. — Carol Ann Duffy

along with the rest of our helpless world; and, O, if you could, you would, where lovers walked, sell off trees and not give a flying fuck for the muted mausoleums of the bees. — Carol Ann Duffy

Bridgewater Hall
Again, the endless northern rain between us
like a veil. Tonight, I know exactly where you are,
which row, which seat. I stand at my back door.
The light pollution blindfolds every star.
I hold my hand out to the rain, simply to feel it, wet
and literal. It spills and tumbles in my palm,
a broken rosary. Devotion to you lets me see
the concert hall, lit up, the other side of town,
then see you leave there, one of hundreds in the dark,
your black umbrella raised. If rain were words, could talk,
somehow, against your skin, I'd say look up, let it utter
on your face. Now hear my love for you. Now walk. — Carol Ann Duffy

A whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head
Warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. — Carol Ann Duffy

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,... — Carol Ann Duffy

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.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words. — Carol Ann Duffy

The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text. It's a perfecting of a feeling in language - it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. — Carol Ann Duffy

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. — Carol Ann Duffy

And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue — Carol Ann Duffy

bees are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them. — Carol Ann Duffy

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want. — Carol Ann Duffy

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. — Carol Ann Duffy

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway — Carol Ann Duffy

I Remember Me
There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.
It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.
Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.
Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.
Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak. — Carol Ann Duffy

Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away. — Carol Ann Duffy

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there's no way I'd do anything to undermine that belief. — Carol Ann Duffy

Then he started his period. One week in bed. Two doctors in. Three painkillers four times a day. And later a letter to the powers that be demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year I see him still, his selfish pale face peering at the moon through the bathroom window. The curse, he said, the curse. — Carol Ann Duffy

Love's language starts, stops, starts;
the right words flowing or clotting in the heart. — Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.
Or when you're away or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips. — Carol Ann Duffy

In the convent, y'all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock 'n' roll.

They call me
Sister Presley here,
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.

Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs
Pascha nostrum immolatus est...
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,

a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.

I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.

Lawdy.
I'm alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.

- Elvis's Twin Sister — Carol Ann Duffy

If poetry could truly tell it backwards, then it would. — Carol Ann Duffy

But behind each player sttod a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VIII's, Snow White cursing the day she left the seven dwarves, Diana, Princess of Wales. The Sheepish Beast came in with a tray of schnapps at the end of the game and we stood for the toast -"fay wray"- then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats. Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead. — Carol Ann Duffy

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. — Carol Ann Duffy

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem. — Carol Ann Duffy

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing. — Carol Ann Duffy

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen. — Carol Ann Duffy

I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way. — Carol Ann Duffy

I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine. — Carol Ann Duffy

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life. — Carol Ann Duffy

Poetry and prayer are very similar. — Carol Ann Duffy

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way. — Carol Ann Duffy

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings. — Carol Ann Duffy

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite. — Carol Ann Duffy

If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening. — Carol Ann Duffy

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form. — Carol Ann Duffy

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. — Carol Ann Duffy

There are not enough faces. Your own gapes back
at you on someone else, but paler, then the moment
when you see the next one and forget yourself.

It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.

Despair stares out from tube-trains at itself
running on the platform for the closing door.
Everyone you meet is telling wordless barefaced truths.

Sometimes the crowd yields one you put a name to,
snapping fiction into fact. Mostly your lover passes in the rain and does not know you when you speak.

- I Remember Me — Carol Ann Duffy

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. — Carol Ann Duffy

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have. — Carol Ann Duffy

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely. — Carol Ann Duffy

Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw. — Carol Ann Duffy

You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart. — Carol Ann Duffy

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape. — Carol Ann Duffy

When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?

Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.

Its consonants
brushing my mouth
like a kiss.

I love your name.
I say it again and again
in this summer rain.

I see it,
discreet in the alphabet,
like a wish.

I pray it
into the night
till its letters are light.

I hear your name
rhyming, rhyming,
rhyming with everything.


"Name — Carol Ann Duffy

What will you do now with the gift of your left life? — Carol Ann Duffy

Went to the Zoo, I said to Him- Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you. — Carol Ann Duffy

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

- Mrs Icarus — Carol Ann Duffy

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

"You — Carol Ann Duffy

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. — Carol Ann Duffy

Mrs Icarus
I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock. — Carol Ann Duffy

I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it. — Carol Ann Duffy

I took an axe
To a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon
To see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
As he slept. — Carol Ann Duffy

I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things. — Carol Ann Duffy

No jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit hung from the blade of grass at your ear. No chandelier see you better lit than here. — Carol Ann Duffy

I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister. — Carol Ann Duffy

It took ten years
In the woods to tell that a mushroom
Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out
Season after season, same rhyme, same reason. — Carol Ann Duffy

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety. — Carol Ann Duffy

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.


"Text — Carol Ann Duffy

Poets sing our human music for us. — Carol Ann Duffy

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems. — Carol Ann Duffy

You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue. — Carol Ann Duffy

The Latin names of plants blur like belief. — Carol Ann Duffy

Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion. — Carol Ann Duffy

She stood upon a continent of ice, which sparkled between sea and sky, endless and dazzling, as though the world kept all its treasure there; a scale which balanced poetry and prayer. — Carol Ann Duffy

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times. — Carol Ann Duffy

The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language ... it's language as play. — Carol Ann Duffy

How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening? — Carol Ann Duffy

For me, poetry is the music of being human. And also a time machine by which we can travel to who we are and to who we will become. — Carol Ann Duffy

I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales. — Carol Ann Duffy

The stars are filming us for no one. — Carol Ann Duffy

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal. — Carol Ann Duffy

My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy. — Carol Ann Duffy

What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love? — Carol Ann Duffy

If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem. And if I didn't, I'd ignore it. — Carol Ann Duffy

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.
The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wife
which made me worse. I howled in my cell.
If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell? — Carol Ann Duffy