The 53-year-old openly lesbian poet will join the ranks of great literary masters including John Dryden (the first to hold the post), William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and John Betjeman. Her work will include penning poems for major state occasions and events involving the Royal Family.

An official announcement will be made by the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham in the coming hours or days informing the public of the new Poet Laureate. Having missed out on the position before due to Tony Blair’s concern over Middle England’s views of a lesbian holding the post, the news will be greeted warmly by gay rights groups.

She succeeds Andrew Motion who stated earlier in the week that he was “relieved” to be leaving the job. The announcement will be made at Manchester University’s John Rylands Library.

You can read an earlier post of mine on this subject here: Carol Ann Duffy to be First Female Poet Laureate.

One of her most well known poetry books is Rapture which is a T.S. Eliot Prize winning collection. It’s a book-length love-poem and a moving act of personal testimony through the human emotions of infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation, and grief. With poems that will find deep resonance in the experience of most readers, it is a collection that can and does speak for us all.

This is not the first time she has been put forward for the position. In 1999, after the death of the then incumbent Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, she narrowly lost out to Andrew Motion. Many critics claim her loss was because of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s concern with how her homosexuality would fare with Middle England.

A rather bitter Duffy said retorted: “I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie (Earl and Countess of Wessex). No self-respecting poet should have to.”

Carol Ann Duffy was born in the Scottish city of Glasgow in 1955. At the age of 4, she and her family moved to Staffordshire in England. She went on to be educated at Saint Austin Roman Catholic Primary School, St. Joseph’s Convent School and Stafford Girls’ High School before studying philosophy from Liverpool University in 1977.

Her first collection of poetry Standing Female Nude was published in 1985. Ten years later, in 1995 she was awarded an OBE and then in 2001, a CBE. Duffy’s popularity has soared over the last couple of decades and she has even become part of the school syllabus in England and Wales.

Journalist Katharine Viner said of Ms Duffy:

“Her poems are accessible and entertaining, yet her form is classical, her technique razor-sharp. She is read by people who don’t really read poetry, yet she maintains the respect of her peers. Reviewers praise her touching, sensitive, witty evocations of love, loss, dislocation, nostalgia; fans talk of greeting her at readings ‘with claps and cheers that would not sound out of place at a pop concert’”.

An announcement on whether she will become Britain’s next Poet Laureate is expected in the coming week after the Queen’s approval. If she is promoted to the position she can expect to earn an annual salary of £5,000 in place of the ancient stipend of a “butt of sack”. She’s also be expected to write poems for the Royal Family and attend major literary events.

See: Carol Ann Duffy is the New British Poet Laureate.