Life & Wisdom Quote by Carol Ann Duffy

There’s a quiet provocation in Carol Ann Duffy naming her most intense working hours like they’re office hours. Coming from a poet, it demystifies the craft without cheapening it. The line doesn’t romanticize inspiration; it schedules it. In a culture that still likes its artists nocturnal, chaotic, and a little self-destructive, Duffy’s 9-to-3 reads like a rebuttal: the work is serious enough to deserve a routine.

The specificity is doing the heavy lifting. “Between 9am and 3pm” isn’t a vibe, it’s a boundary. It suggests a life arranged around attention: a defended block where language gets the best version of her mind. The subtext is less “I’m disciplined” than “I’m protecting the work.” Those hours also echo institutional time - school, administration, the managed day - which matters for Duffy, who has moved through public literary roles (including Poet Laureate) where the poet is both artist and civic worker. She’s implicitly refusing the split between “real jobs” and “creative work,” insisting that poems come from labor, not lightning.

There’s also an understated feminist charge. For many writers, especially women, time is the scarcest material. Claiming the middle of the day - not the leftovers at night - is a statement about entitlement to focus. The intensity sits in that claim: poetry isn’t the thing you squeeze in after life. It’s what the day is built to hold.