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Born: In Glasgow, Scotland, on December 23, 1955 (Parrott-Sheffer)
- Her parents, May Black and Frank Duffy, are of Irish Catholic descent and she grew up with her four younger brothers (Poets.org)
- At 6 years old she moved to Stafford, England with her family (Parrott-Sheffer)
- Attended convent schools and her family experienced financial issues (Green)
- Identified as a lesbian starting in her childhood (Macleod)

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Poet Laureate of Britain - first woman and openly lesbian poet to hold this position (2009-2019)

Dame Commander of the British Empire (2015)

Scottish Arts Council Award for Standing Female Nude (1985)

Somerset Maugham Award for The Other Country (1990) and Selling Manhattan (1987)

Whitbread Book Award for Mean Time (1993)

T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for Rapture (2005)

Costa Poetry Award for Collected Poems (2015)

Lannan Literary Award

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in England

Signal Prize for Children's Verse

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Feminism
Love
Societal Roles
Gender
Oppression
Social Critique
Perspective
Deconstruction
Marginalized

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She attended Liverpool University and graduated with a degree in Philosophy in 1977, beginning her job as an editor and critic of poetry for The Guardian and Ambit. (Parrott-Sheffer)

A Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, she lectures in poetry and has also been appointed as the Creative Director of the Writing School there. (Green)

During the span of these years her career consisted of her published poems, books, anthologies, children's books, and plays. She has received numerous awards for her works that tackle the oppression of gender, empowerment of feminism in literature, and the various forms of love in her modern style which appeals to and invites a wider audience to her writing. She goals to provide the feminist perspective on the knowledge of society and empower women through her love for literature and poetry. (Macleod)

Duffy raised her daughter, Ella Duffy, with her partner and fellow poet Jackie Kay. They live in Manchester and Ella Duffy has also followed in her mother's footsteps and writes poetry as well. (Macleod, Green)

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Standing Female Nude: contrasted the awareness of what society expects women to be with self-awareness of identity and not belonging to the idealized version that men create (Macleod)

The World's Wife: the female perspective on classic tales, legends, and stories, providing the voice of the women and wives of Aesop, Pontius Pilate, Quasimodo, Sisyphus, Darwin, King Kong, and others. The rewritten stories that bring a different light onto the well-known men by portraying what the women had thought, reacted, and dealt with in a powerful way. She empowers women by showing their dominance in the stories and giving female characters strength. (Macleod)

Poet Laureate: Duffy spoke out when she was previously denied the title of Poet Laureate in Britain due to the fear that her identity as a lesbian would trouble English society at the time. She was given the position in the next term as the first female and openly lesbian poet. (Parrott-Sheffer)

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Ruth Padel from The Independent: "Duffy's formidably inventive artistry, her dedication to the craft and tradition of poetry, and above all the love poem." (Poets.org)

Economist: "spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margins of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world." (Macleod)

Katherine Viner from the Guardian Weekend: “poems are accessible and entertaining, yet her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. Reviewers praise her touching, sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia" (Macleod)

Jane Satterfield from Antioch Review:  “Duffy’s mastery of personae allows for seamless movement through the centuries; in this complementary chorus, there’s voice and vision for the coming ones.” (Macleod)

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