Speaking from the Margins: The Voice of the ‘Other’ in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay

Speaking from the Margins: The Voice of the “Other’ in the Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay studies Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay as poets who identify and represent some key forms of otherness may take in the British society of the 1980s and the 1990s. Indeed, although Duffy’s poetry is political and concerned with the British society of the 1980s and the 1990s, particularly with the condition of the underprivileged and people pushed to the margins of society as a result of Thatcherite policies, criticism of her poetry is more concerned with her feminist representation of gender in her work. Thus, it is important that her poetry of the 1980s and the 1990s is recognised as a poetry of the other as Duffy in this poetry gives specifically a panorama of Thatcherite Britain through the voice of the other . Similarly, this thesis analyses Jackie Kay’s poetry as a poetry which is critical not only of Britain but also is particularly concerned with the condition of the racial and the sexual other in the 1980s and the 1990s Britain. Although The Adoption Papers has often been discussed and analysed mostly by focusing on the issues of identity and adoption, Severe Gale 8 , the sequel to The Adoption Papers , Other Lovers and Off Colour have not been the focus of much academic study from the aspect of the voice given to the racial and the sexual other.