Journal of the Linguistic Association of Nigeria Volume 14 Number 2 2011 (pp. 351-363) Woman-to-Woman: Displacement, Sexuality and Gender in Carol Ann Duffy's Poetry Ismail Bala Department of English, Bayero University, Kano ibgarba@yahoo.co.uk Carol Ann Duffy is, arguably, not only the most widely acclaimed poet in Britain today, but is also a major influence on a wide range of poets. With her filleted syntax, populist verse technique, feminist politics, and most importantly dramatic monologue, (which she is famous for), Duffy best illustrates the subtle, but profound changes that are taking place in contemporary British poetry. Duffy is also known for her poetry's attempt to unmask the poetic language, her exploration and exploitation of everyday speech; as well as addressing of complex philosophical issues, like the place of language in the construction of the self, the failure of language to say anything, etc. She also writes about lesbian love and female sexuality, in either gendered or ungendered narrative voices. This paper seeks to appraise and discuss the poet's sense of displacement and sexuality through textual analysis of Duffy's major book-length collections. It also highlights the place of pronouns in the poet's oeuvre, while concluding with the proposition that "home" in Duffy's poetry is a reflection of pluralism and fluidity in which the poet is raised and lived; and the implication of these for African readers is also underlined. Introduction This paper will examine one of the strongest voices in British poetry today, Carol Ann Duffy. Duffy is seen as someone out to break literary taboos and traditions which manifest in her denunciation of traditional discourses, and ability to re-write masculinist's representations of female identity and sexuality (Armitage and Crawford 1998). Duffy is among the most celebrated and widely read poets in Britain today: her poems have found a place in her native Scottish and English schools' curriculum; and she has received numerous awards including the Forward, Whitbread and a CBE 1 . Given the success that Duffy achieved she could well have been the representative poet of her generation. The representativeness of her work is probably the subject of her own sense and sensibility, of her dislocation within contemporary Britain 2 . It is by virtue of her exemplary re-introduction of a feminist voice in poetry through habitual, but impressive use of the technique of monologue, which gives her poems a vantage position to attack and affirm, while allowing her to simplify and reconcile complex ideas about language and its political meaning. Duffy's poetry belongs to "the New Plain Style" employed by many contemporary poets – Tony Harrison, Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Kit Wright and Simon Armitage – along with sophisticated devices and "speaking voice" 3 . Yet Duffy is significantly different and stands out from her contemporaries (Forbes 1995). An important feature of Carol Ann Duffy's poems is the issue of displacement. Closely related to this is her treatment of sexuality. While another aspect of her work is the question of pronoun and the related use of gendered and ungendered voice. In discussing Duffy's work, there is quite a lot to gain in tracing her development through