This course is for everyone who enjoys reading great poetry and wishes to learn more about a specific poet. Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) spent her first few years in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. She started writing poetry at the age of 11. Her well-known and well-liked poetry engages topics such as gender and oppression, expressing them in familiar, conversational language that makes her work accessible to many. Her work explores both everyday experience and the rich fantasy worlds of herself and others. Like the best of her novelist peers, she slides in and out of her characters' lives. In 2009, she became the first female poet laureate of Great Britain and continued in that role until 2019. She has won many prizes for her poetry and has been awarded honorary doctorates by four universities. She holds an honorary fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge.