Observer (London, England), August 15, 1999, review of The World's Wife (audio version), p. 14; October 24, 1999, Kate Kellaway, review of Meeting Midnight, p. 13.

Christmas Poems showcases Duffy’s bold and innovative voice, alongside gorgeous artwork from Rob Ryan, David De Las Heras and Lara Hawthorne, amongst others. These ten much-loved poems are gathered together for the first time in this compendium to make a perfect gift for old friends celebrating a decade’s tradition or those experiencing the magic of Duffy’s festive verse for the first time. Little Women, Big Boys (one-act), first produced in London, England, at Almeida Theatre, August 8, 1986. Times Literary Supplement, March 3, 1995, p. 24; July 7, 1995, p. 32; December 3, 1999, Alan Brownjohn, review of The World's Wife, p. 24.

Horn Book, May, 1994, Nancy Vasilakis, review of I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems for Young Feminists, p. 329. Nonetheless, Feminine Gospels (2002), as the title suggests, is a concentration on the female point of view. It is a celebration of female experience, and it has a strong sense of magic and fairytale discourse. However, as in traditional fairytales, there is sometimes a sense of darkness as well as joy. Birth, death and the cycles and stages of life feature strongly, including menstruation, motherhood and aging. Duffy’s beloved daughter Ella was born in 1995, and her experience of motherhood has deeply influenced her poetry (as well as inspiring her to write other works for children). Poems such as 'The Cord' and 'The Light Gatherer' rejoice in new life, while ‘Death and the Moon’ mourns those who have passed on: ‘[…] I cannot say where you are. Unreachable / by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable / in the air, even if souls are stars […]’. A beautiful book bringing together the works of Carol Ann Duffy from her time as Poet Laureate, for the first time ever. A decade, ten years of much-loved poems alongside beautiful illustrations – this is a book that will be brought out again and again over the Winter period. Poet, playwright and freelance writer Carol Ann Duffy was born on 23 December 1955 in Glasgow and read philosophy at Liverpool University.

Times Educational Supplement, January 22, 1999, review of The Pamphlet, p. 13; April 23, 1999, review of Five Finger-Piglets, p. 27; December 17, 1999, review of The World's Wife, p. 22; January 19, 2001, John Mole, review of The Oldest Girl in the World, p. F20. Editor) Stopping for Death: Poems of Death and Loss, illustrated by Trisha Rafferty, Holt (New York, NY), 1996. The writing is gorgeous, musical, spellbinding. Each poem is illustrated by a different illustrator, which reinforces the impression of stepping into a different universe every time we move from one story to the next. I fell in love with the pictures in the poem Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday, but I have one big regret: I looked everywhere but no illustrator is credited anywhere in the book. That's a shame, and I hope the publisher will remedy to that next time the book goes to print.It all comes from the same place. There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration - a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. 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.' The idea of updating The Night Before Christmas came from Anya Serota, a young editor at John Murray. Duffy was doubtful at first, not wanting to tinker with a classic, but her own childlike passion for all things Christmassy made the challenge irresistible. (She will turn 50 on 23 December, making this holiday season doubly festive.) Her adult poetry collections are Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Other Country (1990); Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year); The World's Wife (1999); Feminine Gospels (2002), a celebration of the female condition; Rapture (2005), winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Bees (2011), winner of the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize; The Christmas Truce (2011), Wenceslas: A Christmas Poem (2012), illustrated by Stuart Kolakovic; Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday (2014) and Sincerity (2018). Her children's poems are collected in New & Collected Poems for Children (2009). In 2012, to mark the Diamond Jubilee, she compiled Jubilee Lines, 60 poems from 60 poets each covering one year of the Queen's reign. In the same year, she was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize. Marked by the death of her mother in the spring, this has been a difficult year, bereavement following close behind the heartbreak she chronicles with such searing brilliance in Rapture, her seventh adult collection, published in September.