Former UK poet laureate's tribute to Queen Elizabeth II: Read here
Queen Elizabeth II's Funeral: Carol Ann Duffy, former Poet Laureate, is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Carol Ann Duffy, former Poet Laureate wrote a poem called ‘Daughter’ to mark Queen Elizabeth II's funeral which is being held in London on Monday. Carol Ann Duffy, a poet and playwright, was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Britain's poet laureate in 2009.
Carol Ann Duffy is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Duffy resigned from the position of Poet Laureate in 2019. Duffy was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly gay poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Here's the poem Duffy shared ahead of Queen Elizabeth's funeral:
"Your mother’s daughter, you set your face
to the road
that ran by the river; abaft you, the castle,
its aphasiac ballroom,
lowered flag. Stoic, your contour a arch on a coin,
you followed the hearse
through sorrow’s landscape- a farmer, stood
on a tractor,
lifting his tweed cap; a aggregation of anglers
shouldering their rods.
And now the villagers, silently raising
their adaptable phones.
Then babies captivated aloft in the towns, to one day
be informed they were there.
But you had your mother’s eyes, as a horse ran free
in a field;
a pheasant flared from a hedge
like a befuddled bouquet;
journeying on by a autumn of aberrant love.
How they craned to glimpse their lives again
in her death; reminded
of Time’s adamant removals, their own bereavements,
as she passed.
The boost of the high arch over a amaze of water;
a faculty of ascending
into anointing ablaze which attenuated into cloud.
Nine further apathetic grey mile to the Old Town; the aftermost mile
a aristocratic mile,
where they aggregate ten-deep as your mother showed you
what she had meant.
Nightfall and cloudburst abreast London. Even the motorways paused;
thousands of headlights in rain
as you adumbral her still; smatterings of applause
from verges and bridges.
Soon abundant they would appear to apperceive this had continued been
the Age of Grief;
that History was once advanced of them. The acme of ice melting
on the roof of the world.
Tonight, childhood’s palace; the iPhone torches bond back
to medieval flame.
So you slowed and accustomed with her, her alone daughter,
and alone her daughter."