New Technology

The writer Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Britain's poet laureate on Friday, becoming the first woman to take a 341-year-old job that has been held by, among others, Dryden, Tennyson, Wordsworth and Ted Hughes.

Duffy, 53, is known for using a deceptively simple style to produce accessible, often mischievous poems dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life. In her most popular collection, The World's Wife (1999), overlooked women in history and mythology get the chance to tell their side of the story, so that one poem imagines, for instance, the relief that Mrs Rip Van Winkle must have felt when her husband fell asleep, finally giving her some time for herself.

Announcing the decision, the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, called Duffy "a towering figure in English literature today and a superb poet" who has "achieved something that only the true greats of literature manage — to be regarded as both popular and profound."

Duffy told the BBC radio program Woman's Hour that she had thought hard about accepting the post and that the decision to take it came "purely because they hadn't had a woman." She added: "I look on it as recognition of the great women poets we now have writing," and said that she hoped to use the job "to contribute to people's understanding of what poetry can do, and where it can be found."

Duffy, who has also written plays, and poems and stories for children, has a daughter, Ella. She had a relationship for some time with the Scottish poet Jackie Kay. In an interview with the writer Jeanette Winterson several years ago, she said she had no interest in being known as a "lesbian poet, whatever that is." She added: "If I am a lesbian icon and a role model, that's great, but if it's a word that is used to reduce me, then you have to ask why someone would want to reduce me." She said she preferred to define herself as "a poet and a mother —that's all."

It remains to be seen what Duffy will make of the laureateship, which is something of a work in progress, despite being so ancient.