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Ted Hughes Award

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44-461: The Ted Hughes Award was an annual literary prize given to a living UK poet for new work in poetry. It was awarded each spring in recognition of a work from the previous year. It was a project which ran alongside Carol Ann Duffy 's tenure as Poet Laureate , which ended when Duffy finished her 10 years as Poet Laureate in 2019 The award was established in 2009 with the permission of Carol Hughes in honour of British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes . Annually

88-586: A 1967 book The Liverpool Scene edited by Edward Lucie-Smith , with a blurb by Ginsberg and published by Donald Carroll. Although he was born in Sussex , Adrian Mitchell shared many of the concerns of the Liverpool poets and is often linked with them in critical discussion. Other related poets include the Londoner Pete Brown (who wrote lyrics for Cream ), Pete Morgan and Alan Jackson (both associated with

132-408: A 46-line poem, "Rings," for the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton . The poem celebrates the rings found in nature and does not specifically mention the couple's names. It begins for both to say and continues: "I might have raised your hand to the sky / to give you the ring surrounding the moon / or looked to twin the rings of your eyes / with mine / or added a ring to the rings of

176-993: A Liverpool accent) reached number 4 in the charts. A year later Lily the Pink reached number 1. Ringo Starr 's bass drum was used; also featured were Jack Bruce from Cream , Graham Nash from The Hollies and Reg Dwight, later renaming himself Elton John . Both hits were in the spirit of cheery and humorous drinking songs. A touring and recording ensemble, Grimms (1971–76), contained an ever-changing cast of Adrian Henri , Brian Patten , Roger McGough, John Gorman, Mike McGear (McCartney), George "Zoot" Money , Neil Innes , Vivian Stanshall , Michael Giles, Kate Robbins , John Megginson, Andy Roberts , David Richards, Peter "Ollie" Halsall , Norman Smedles, Brian Jones, Ritchie Routledge , Valerie Movie, Gerry Conway , Pete Tatters and Timmy Donald (amongst many others). S.N. Radhika Lakshmi observes "the Liverpool poets' approach to poetry differs from that of other poets in that they consistently give

220-504: A parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in 1983 in addition to managing Stafford F.C. Duffy was educated in Stafford at Saint Austin's RC Primary School (1962–1967), St. Joseph's Convent School (1967–1970), and Stafford Girls' High School (1970–1974), her literary talent encouraged by two English teachers, June Scriven at St Joseph's, and Jim Walker at Stafford Girls' High. She was

264-403: A passionate reader from an early age, and always wanted to be a writer, producing poems from the age of 11. When one of her English teachers died, she wrote: You sat on your desk, swinging your legs, reading a poem by Yeats to the bored girls, except my heart stumbled and blushed as it fell in love with the words and I saw the tree in the scratched old desk under my hands, heard

308-490: A poem about violence, was removed from the GCSE AQA Anthology , following a complaint about its references to knife crime and a goldfish being flushed down a toilet. The poem begins: "Today I am going to kill something. Anything./I have had enough of being ignored and today/I am going to play God." The protagonist kills a fly, then a goldfish. The budgie panics and the cat hides. It ends with him, or her, or them, leaving

352-641: A poet, in words like 'plash'— Seamus Heaney words, interesting words. I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way." She told The Observer : "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." Duffy rose to greater prominence in UK poetry circles after her poem "Whoever She Was" won the Poetry Society National Poetry Competition in 1983. In her first collection, Standing Female Nude (1985), she uses

396-450: A single "Love Is" / "Woo-Woo". The best-known band to emerge was The Scaffold (1963–1974), which featured John Gorman , Mike McCartney (brother of Paul McCartney ) and Roger McGough. Initially Adrian Henri was a member, when they were known as The Liverpool, One Fat Lady, All Electric Show . ("One Fat Lady" is the bingo term for 8, and they mostly lived in the Liverpool 8 district.) In January 1968 Thank U Very Much (sung with

440-519: A stream of possessions, aspirations, idioms and turns of phrase. However, she is also a time-traveller and a shape-shifter, gliding from Troy to Hollywood, galaxies to intestines, sloughed-off skin to department stores while other poets make heavy weather of one kiss, one kick, one letter ... from verbal nuances to mind-expanding imaginative leaps, her words seem freshly plucked from the minds of non-poets – that is, she makes it look easy. Of her own writing, Duffy has said: "I'm not interested, as

484-514: A tree / by forming a handheld circle with you, thee, / ...". She wrote the verse with Stephen Raw, a textual artist, and a signed print of the work was sent to the couple as a wedding gift. Duffy also wrote the poem "The Throne," which she composed for the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation . In Stylist magazine, Duffy said of becoming poet laureate: "There's no requirement. I do get asked to do things and so far I've been happy to do them." She also spoke about being appointed to

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528-430: A wide audience informed the poetry. Readings took place in a pub or club environment. The anthology The Mersey Sound was published by Penguin in 1967, containing the poems of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, and has remained in print ever since, selling in excess of 500,000 copies. It brought the three poets to "considerable acclaim and critical fame", and has been widely influential. In 2002 they were given

572-519: Is characterised by its directness of expression, simplicity of language, suitability for live performance and concern for contemporary subjects and references. There is often humour, but the full range of human experience and emotion is addressed. The kids didn't see this poetry with a capital p, they understood it as modern entertainment, as part of the pop-movement. (Roger McGough) The poets most commonly associated with this label are Adrian Henri , Roger McGough and Brian Patten . They were featured in

616-532: Is not poetry", a criticism remarkably similar to that made by F. Dalton in The Times Literary Supplement , on 31 June 1917 about "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry ...". Alan Bleasdale said, "The poetry of Henri, Patten and McGough has stayed with me for 35 years. The beauty

660-692: The 2010 FIFA World Cup ; the poem was published in The Daily Mirror and treats modern celebrity culture as a kind of mythicisation. "Silver Lining," written in April 2010, acknowledges the grounding of flights caused by the ash of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull . On 30 August 2010 she premièred her poem "Vigil" for the Manchester Pride Candlelight Vigil in memory of LGBTQ people who have lost their lives to HIV/AIDS . Duffy wrote

704-600: The Turner Prize to artist Richard Wright . Duffy received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2009. In 2015, Duffy was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy . In her first poem as poet laureate, Duffy tackled the scandal over British MPs' expenses in the format of a sonnet . Her second, " Last Post ", was commissioned by the BBC to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch ,

748-402: The 1960s Edinburgh poetry scene), Tom Pickard and Barry MacSweeney (both from Newcastle ), Spike Hawkins , Jim Bennett , Heather Holden, Mike Evans, Pete Roche and Henry Graham . The poets generally came from a working-class background and went to art college rather than university. There was a strong allegiance with pop music, and the values and effectiveness of that in reaching out to

792-503: The Freedom of the City of Liverpool. The Liverpool Scene was a poetry band, which included Adrian Henri , Andy Roberts , Mike Evans, Mike Hart , Percy Jones and Brian Dodson . It grew out of the success of The Incredible New Liverpool Scene, a CBS LP featuring Henri and McGough reading their work, with accompaniment by the guitarist Roberts. Liverpool DJ John Peel , who was then working on

836-419: The Liverpool poets as pioneers of "pop poetry" in the UK engendered hostility from the literary establishment. Ian Hamilton said: Al Alvarez wrote about "the fashion for the diluted near-verse designed for mass readings and poetry-and-jazz concerts", linking it with pop lyrics as "the logic of a traditional form at its weariest", scolding "the poet resigns his responsibilities" and concluding, "what he offers

880-709: The World (2000). She also collaborated with the Manchester composer, Sasha Johnson Manning , on The Manchester Carols , a series of Christmas songs that premiered in Manchester Cathedral in 2007. She also participated in the Bush Theatre 's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books , for which she wrote a piece based on a book of the King James Bible . A modernised adaptation of Everyman by Duffy, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in

924-558: The albums achieved little success, although the band did become popular on the UK university and college circuit. Their public performances included a 1969 tour when they opened for Led Zeppelin ; they also toured the US but did not attract much acclaim from US critics and audiences. Henri was described in performance as "bouncing thunderously and at risk to audience and fellow performers, the stage vibrating out of rhythm beneath him." The albums were: There were at least three "best of" albums and

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968-458: The annual honorarium that Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy receives as Laureate from The Queen. Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University , and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet laureate,

1012-399: The bird in the oak outside scribble itself on the air. Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in

1056-536: The distant Latin chanting of a train. From "Prayer", Mean Time , Anvil, 1994 When Duffy was 15, June Scriven sent her poems to Outposts , a publisher of pamphlets, where it was read by the bookseller Bernard Stone, who published some of them. When she was 16, she met Adrian Henri , 39 at the time, one of the Liverpool poets , and decided she wanted to be with him; she then lived with him for 10 years until they split in 1982. "He gave me confidence," she said, "he

1100-621: The first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position. Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award ; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award ; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award ; and Rapture (2005), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize . Her poems address issues such as oppression , gender, and violence, in accessible language. Carol Ann Duffy

1144-426: The house with a knife. "The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm." According to The Guardian , schools were urged to destroy copies of the unedited anthology, though this was later denied by AQA. Duffy called the decision ridiculous. "It's an anti-violence poem," she said. "It is a plea for education rather than violence." She responded with "Mrs Schofield's GCSE", a poem about violence in other fiction, and

1188-511: The impression of being real people getting to grips with real and pressing situations." She continues: Adrian Henri was described by Lucie-Smith as "the theoretician of the group" and asserted the need to be in touch with contemporary life, following T. S. Eliot 's dictum "to purify the dialect of the tribe" and pointing out that his tribe included everyone from motor-bike specialists through consultant gynaecologists and Beatles fans to admen and peeping toms. His conclusion was: The emergence of

1232-676: The last remaining British soldiers to fight in World War I. Her third, "The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009", addresses current events such as species extinction , the climate change conference in Copenhagen, the banking crisis , and the war in Afghanistan . In March 2010, she wrote "Achilles (for David Beckham)" about the Achilles tendon injury that left David Beckham out of the English football team at

1276-474: The members of the Poetry Society and Poetry Book Society recommended a living UK poet who had completed the newest and most innovative work that year, "highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life." The award sought to celebrate new work that might have fallen beyond the conventional realms of poetry, embracing mediums such as music, dance and theatre. The £5,000 prize funded from

1320-467: The pirate radio station Radio London , picked up on the LP and featured it on his influential late-night Perfumed Garden show. After Radio London closed down, Peel visited Liverpool and met the band; as a consequence, they were featured in session on his BBC Top Gear and Night Ride shows, and in 1968 he produced their first LP. Four LPs were issued with Henri's poetry heavily featured. Despite Peel's support

1364-545: The point of it. "Explain how poetry/pursues the human like the smitten moon/above the weeping, laughing earth ..." The Mrs. Schofield of the title refers to Pat Schofield, an external examiner at Lutterworth College, Leicestershire, who complained about "Education for Leisure," calling it "absolutely horrendous." For the new National Qualifications Higher English Course in Scotland, Duffy's agents, RCW Literacy Agency, refused permission for her poem, "Originally," to be reproduced in

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1408-771: The publicly accessible version of the paper. In 2011 Duffy, spearheaded a new poetry competition for schools, named Anthologise . The competition is administered by the Poetry Book Society and was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in September 2011. School students aged 11–18 from around the UK were invited to create and submit their own anthologies of published poetry. The 2011 Anthologise judges were Duffy; Gillian Clarke (National Poet for Wales); John Agard ; Grace Nichols and Cambridge Professor of Children's Poetry, Morag Styles . The first ever winners of Anthologise were

1452-536: The rich fantasy life of herself and others. In dramatizing scenes from childhood, adolescence, and adult life, she discovers moments of consolation through love, memory, and language. Charlotte Mendelson writes in The Observer : Part of Duffy's talent – besides her ear for ordinary eloquence, her gorgeous, powerful, throwaway lines, her subtlety – is her ventriloquism. Like the best of her novelist peers ... she slides in and out of her characters' lives on

1496-443: The role by Queen Elizabeth II , saying: "She's lovely! I met her before I became poet laureate but when I was appointed I had an 'audience' with her which meant we were alone, at the palace, for the first time. We chatted about poetry. Her mother was friends with Ted Hughes whose poetry I admire a lot. We spoke about his influence on me." Duffy stood down as laureate in May 2019. Duffy's work explores both everyday experience and

1540-796: The sixth form pupils of Monkton Combe School , Bath , with their anthology titled The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead , which was described by Duffy as "assured and accomplished as any anthology currently on the bookshelves." Duffy is also a playwright, and has had plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre in London. Her plays include Take My Husband (1982), Cavern of Dreams (1984), Little Women, Big Boys (1986) Loss (1986), Casanova (2007). Her radio credits include an adaptation of Rapture . Her children's collections include Meeting Midnight (1999) and The Oldest Girl in

1584-554: The title role, was performed at the Royal National Theatre from April to July 2015. At the age of 16, Duffy began a relationship with poet Adrian Henri , living with him until 1982. Duffy later met poet Jackie Kay , with whom she had a 15-year relationship. During her relationship with Kay, Duffy gave birth to a daughter, Ella (born 1995), whose biological father is fellow poet Peter Benson . Raised in her parents' Roman Catholic faith, Duffy became an atheist when she

1628-402: The voices of outsiders, for example in the poems " Education for Leisure " and "Dear Norman." Her next collection, Feminine Gospels (2002), continues this vein, showing an increased interest in long narrative poems, accessible in style and often surreal in their imagery. Her 2005 publication, Rapture (2005), is a series of intimate poems charting the course of a love affair, for which she won

1672-479: The £10,000 T. S. Eliot Prize . In 2007, she published The Hat , a collection of poems for children. Online copies of her poems are rare, but her poem dedicated to U A Fanthorpe , "Premonitions," is available through The Guardian , and several others via The Daily Mirror . Duffy's poems are studied in British schools at ISC, GCSE, National 5, A-level, and higher levels. In August 2008, her "Education for Leisure,"

1716-453: Was 15. However, she has spoken of the influence her religious upbringing has had on her poetry, stating: "Poetry and prayer are very similar." She is a lesbian . Duffy holds honorary doctorates from the University of Dundee , the University of Hull , the University of St Andrews , and the University of Warwick , as well as an Honorary Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge . She

1760-523: Was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002, and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to poetry. Liverpool poets The Liverpool poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool , England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry . Their work

1804-537: Was born into a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals , considered a poor part of Glasgow . She was the daughter of Mary (née Black) and Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter. Her mother's parents were Irish, and her father had Irish grandparents. The eldest of five siblings, she has four brothers: Frank, Adrian, Eugene and Tim. The family moved to Stafford , England, when Duffy was six years old. Her father worked for English Electric . A trade unionist, he stood unsuccessfully as

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1848-490: Was editor of the poetry magazine, Ambit . In 1996, she was appointed as a lecturer in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University , and later became creative director of its Writing School. Duffy was a contender for the post of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1999 after the death of Ted Hughes , but lost out to Andrew Motion . Duffy said she would not have accepted the position at that time anyway, because she

1892-566: Was great. It was all poetry, very heady, and he was never faithful. He thought poets had a duty to be unfaithful." She applied to the University of Liverpool to be near him, and began a philosophy degree there in 1974. She had two plays performed at the Liverpool Playhouse , wrote a pamphlet, Fifth Last Song , and received an honours degree in philosophy in 1977. She won the National Poetry Competition in 1983. She worked as poetry critic for The Guardian from 1988 to 1989, and

1936-523: Was in a relationship with Scottish poet Jackie Kay , had a young daughter, and would not have welcomed the public attention. In the same year, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature . She was appointed as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009, when Motion's 10-year term was over. Duffy was featured on The South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg in December 2009 and on 7 December she presented

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