Both Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay have held the most distinguished positions a poet can hold: Duffy was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019 and Kay was the Makar, the Poet Laureate of Scotland, from 2016 to 2021. As these positions are associated with a certain grandeur and have historically been held by (white) men, it is particularly striking that Kay and Duffy, as openly lesbian and mixed-race (Kay) women, were able to endow the ‘Poet Laureate’ with a more inclusive understanding. Their working-class and multi-ethnic background has informed their writing from the beginning, along with Kay’s involvement in the gay and lesbian theatre scene in the UK in the 1980s.
In the seminar we will trace the creative work of both writers, progressing chronologically from Duffy’s Standing Female Nude (1985) to Kay’s autobiographical novel Red Dust Road (2011). Our discussions will focus both on the literary features of their poetry and on the ways in which they blend the personal with the political, using their voices as (distinguished) authors to talk about female (lesbian) identity, love, intersectionality and racism in present-day UK among other topics. Our close readings will be informed by relevant theoretical texts from the fields of feminist and postcolonial theory.
By the end of this seminar, students will (1) display familiarity with major characteristics of (contemporary) poetry; (2) offer comprehensive analyses of selected poems by two well-known writers that are informed by knowledge of their generic contexts; (3) recognize and critically assess the potential of poetry in commenting on societal discourses and in the context of 21st century cultural production.
- Trainer/in: Heidi Liedke