An evening of compelling contemporary poetry from two of Great Britain’s finest poets at St Stephen's School in Rome.

The English Department and The Lyceum of St Stephen’s School present a reading by former UK Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, and prize-winning poet, Ella Duffy.

The reading will take place at 19.00 on Monday 3 February in the auditorium of the school which is located in the Aventino area of Rome.

Those interested in attending should register via EventBrite. For more information about the event contact moira.egan@sssrome.it.

Carol Ann Duffy, DBE, was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in May 2009 and served until 2019. She was the first woman, the first Scottish-born poet, and the first openly LGBT poet to hold the position. A poet, playwright, and author of children’s books, Dame Duffy is Professor of Contemporary Poetry & Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School.

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; The World’s Wife (1999); Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize; The Bees (2011); and Sincerity (2018).

Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in rich yet accessible language. Her work is widely read in schools around the world, including in the IB and Creative Writing curricula at St Stephen’s.

Ella Duffy is a prize-winning younger poet, whose first pamphlet, New Hunger, will be published in 2020 by Smith/Doorstop Books. Her work has appeared in Ambit, The Guardian Review, Pain, The Rialto, and in other journals. She was awarded third place in the 2019 Ambit Poetry Competition and was a runner-up in the 2018 Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry. In 2010, Ella won the prestigious Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.