Born in Glasgow in 1955, Carol Ann Duffy was the oldest child and only girl of five siblings in an Irish Catholic family. Duffy began publishing poems at the age of 15 after submitting work to the British literary magazine Outposts. She attended Liverpool University, graduating in 1977 with a degree in philosophy. Following university, she received a C. Day Lewis Fellowship to serve as a writer-in-residence at schools in London's East End during the early 1980s.
In 1983, her poem "Whoever She Was" won the U.K.'s National Poetry Competition. Her first collection, Standing Female Nude, was released two years later. She has published frequently in the years since. Her books include Selling Manhattan (1987), The Other Country (1990), Mean Time (1993), Feminine Gospels (2002), Selected Poems (2004), Rapture (2006), and New and Collected Poetry for Children (2009). Among other prizes and awards, her books have received a Whitbread Poetry award, a Forward Poetry award, a Somerset Maugham award, and a Scottish Arts Council award.
Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate of Britain in 2009, remaining Poet Laureate for the following ten years. She was both the first woman and the first openly gay person to be named Poet Laureate of Britain. Other poets and critics have praised her for her portrayals of love in all its varieties, as well as for her vivid scenes of life in contemporary Britain. The poet Sean O'Brien has said of Duffy, "Poetry, like love, depends on a kind of recognition. So often with Duffy does the reader say, 'Yes, that’s it exactly,' that she could well become the representative poet of the present day." Her work is frequently studied in British schools and she has spoken about the educational value of poetry. In 2011, she initiated a poetry competition for British students, called Anthologise.
Duffy has worked widely across genres and disciplines. She has published plays including Take My Husband (1982) and Little Women, Big Boys (1986), as well as stage adaptations, such as a version of Casanova imagining the titular character as a woman. In addition to writing for children and writing for the stage, she has collaborated with the musician Eliana Tomkins. She served as editor of the literary journal Ambit and was a poetry critic at The Guardian from 1988 to 1989. Duffy also works in the academic world: in 1996 she began working as a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, later becoming the creative director of their writing school.