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I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Simple
#Use
#Way
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I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Prayer
#Memorable
#Writing
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Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Writing
#Feelings
#Trying
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Christmas
#Father
#Believe
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If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#War
#Thinking
#Water
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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
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Children
#Light
#House
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I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Book
#Writing
#Fairy Tale
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My prose is turgid, it just hasn't got any energy
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Energy
#Prose
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I still read Donne, particularly his love poems
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Carol Ann Duffy
#His Love
#Love Poems
#Donne
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I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Thinking
#Anxiety
#Abuse
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Poetry and prayer are very similar
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Prayer
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Narrative
#Facts
#Emotion
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Memories
#Inspiration
#Imagination
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Where I lived - winter and hard earth.I sat in my cold stone roomchoosing 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 flowersto her mother's house. I swearthe air softened and warmed as she moved,the blue sky smiling, none too soon,with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Girl
#Mother
#Daughter
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What do I haveto help me, without spell or prayer,endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,the death of love?
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Prayer
#Heartless
#Helping
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Laughing
#Littles
#Faces
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Technology
#Feelings
#Texting
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Thinking
#Discovery
#Encounters
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I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Writing
#Arriving
#Shapes
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I like to think that I'm a sort of poet for our times.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Thinking
#Poet
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Inspirational
#Teacher
#Heart
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Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Children
#Matter
#Problem
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Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely
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Carol Ann Duffy
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Children
#Thinking
#Enabling
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The stars are filming us for no one.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Stars
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Prayer
#Ice
#Sea
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You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Drawing
#Tongue
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What will you do now with the gift of your left life?
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Carol Ann Duffy
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Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Giving
#Better Off Dead
#Want
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Oysters
#Creative
#Trying
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I have piles of poetry books in the bathroom, on the stairs, everywhere. The only way to write poetry is to read it.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Book
#Writing
#Way
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Memories
#Heart
#People
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It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Winning
#Males
#Fiction
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How would you prepare to die on a perfect April evening?
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Perfect
#Evening
#April
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Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Opposites
#Wonder
#Said
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It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Moon
#Paper
#Brown
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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.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Grateful
#Writing
#Ideas
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I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Doe
#Fine
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Time hates love, wants love poor,/but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Hate
#Gold
#Want
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I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Writing
#Poetry
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I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Mother
#Children
#Being A Mother
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Having a child takes you back to all those parts of your own childhood that you had hidden away.
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Carol Ann Duffy
#Children
#Childhood
