Carol Ann Duffy

“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.”

“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.”

“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 bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere we would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer rhymeto his, now echo, assonance; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romanceand drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held me upon that next bes”

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

“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 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.”

“I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.”

“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 like to use simple words, but in a complicated way.”

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

“I write in that space between Ella's childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.”

“Then he started his period.One week in bed.Two doctors in.Three painkillers four times a day.And later a letter to the powers-that-bedemanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.”

“The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.”

“For this,let gardens grow, where beelines end,sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;where bees pray on their knees, sing, praisein pear trees, plum trees; beesare the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.”

“If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.”

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

“But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil's wifewhich made me worse. I howled in my cell.If the Devil is gone then how could this be hell?”

“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.”

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