Carol Ann Duffy was born in the Gorbals (Glasgow) on 23 December 1955, the first child of May (née Black) and Frank Duffy; May was Irish and Frank had Irish grandparents. They subsequently had four sons, and moved when Carol Ann was six to Stafford, where her father worked for English Electric and managed Stafford Rangers Football Club in his spare time. Duffy attended Roman Catholic primary and middle schools, and then Stafford Girls’ High.

The first female, Scottish Poet Laureate in the role's 400 year history, Carol Ann Duffy's combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms, has won her a very wide audience of readers and listeners.