Carol Ann Duffy was born into a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals,[7] considered a poor part of Glasgow. She was the daughter of Mary (née Black) and Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter.[3] Her mother's parents were Irish, and her father had Irish grandparents.[7] The eldest of five siblings, she has four brothers: Frank, Adrian, Eugene and Tim. The family moved to Stafford, England, when Duffy was six years old. Her father worked for English Electric. A trade unionist, he stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in 1983 in addition to managing Stafford F.C.[3]
Duffy was educated in Stafford at Saint Austin's RC Primary School (1962–1967), St. Joseph's Convent School (1967–1970), and Stafford Girls' High School (1970–1974), her literary talent encouraged by two English teachers, June Scriven at St Joseph's, and Jim Walker at Stafford Girls' High.[3] She was a passionate reader from an early age, and always wanted to be a writer, producing poems from the age of 11. When one of her English teachers died, she wrote:
You sat on your desk, swinging your legs, reading a poem by Yeats to the bored girls, except my heart stumbled and blushed as it fell in love with the words and I saw the tree in the scratched old desk under my hands, heard the bird in the oak outside scribble itself on the air.[8]
