Carol Ann Duffy's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely.

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.

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

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

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

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

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.

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

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

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.