Carol Ann Duffy - Poet Laureate, UK

Carol Ann Duffy is the current UK Poet Laureate, appointed in 2009, following on from Andrew Motion and Ted Hughes.

I love her poetry - for it's insight, playfulness, intelligence and emotion... Her latest book is New and collected poems for children, published in 2009 by Faber ISBN 9780571219681 - I heartily recommend it for every home and school library !

There are so many poems I love in this book, but here is one...

Don't be scared

The dark is only a blanket
for the moon to put on her bed.
The dark is a private cinema
for the movie dreams in your head.
The dark is a black dress
to show off the sequin stars.
The dark is the wooden hole
behind the strings of happy guitars.
The dark is a jeweller's velvet cloth
where children sleep like pearls.
The dark is a spool of film
to photograph boys and girls, so smile in your sleep in the dark.
Don't be scared.


Carol Ann Duffy's picture books are wonderful too - poetic, original, fairy-tale like... The lost happy endings, and The tear thief, both available to borrow from National Library.

I've also enjoyed her adult poetry - her book Rapture is about love - from beginning to end, and the witty The world's wife is a collection of poems from the point of view of wives of famous men -Mrs Midas, Mrs Aesop, Mrs Freud...

You may be interested in a UK website, free in 2010, called Sheer Poetry http://www.sheerpoetry.co.uk/
"Resources on poetry by the poets themselves... for primary teachers and students, secondary teachers and students, and for university level and the general poetry reader. Here you will find poems, articles, workshops, interviews and essays, question sessions and more, about and by Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage, and others."