Carol Ann Duffy'Considered one of the most representative, widely read, important, and loved poets of her time, Duffy has produced many collections since the publication of Standing Female Nude in 1985. It received the Scottish Arts Council book award, and her other collections also received prizes such as the Somerset Maughan for Selling Manhattan (1987) and the Forward and Whitbread for her fourth collection Mean Time (1993). She was given an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995. In addition to her outstanding reputation and output, she qualifies as a major poet on account of her range and influence on other poets. She restored poetry's function as public utterance and generated new kinds of democratic expression that maintain the imaginative and linguistic qualities of her art...'