Mother Tongue, Other Tongue, which encourages children with English as a second language to express themselves and share poetry written in their mother tongue, and students who are native English speakers to experiment with writing in a learned language, now a national campaign run annually;

The cleaner, weary, looks directly into the audience and asks what kind of day has been had by all. Are we enjoying our Prosecco? (Knowing sniggers given this is Opening Night) She warns that she will be clearing up condoms before the night is out but promises that won’t be the worst thing she has to clean up. Everyman then turns to Good Deeds, who says she would go with him, but she is too weak as Everyman has not loved her in his life. Good Deeds summons her sister Knowledge to accompany them, and together they go to see Confession. In the presence of Confession, Everyman begs God for forgiveness and repents his sins, punishing himself with a scourge. After his scourging, Everyman is absolved of his sins, and as a result, Good Deeds becomes strong enough to accompany Everyman on his journey with Death. [8] Ejiofor arrives onstage on wires, falling from the rafters in slow motion in front of a giant video screen. The orgiastic Wolf of Wall Street party scene that follows features a sustained blast of Donna Summer‘s “I Feel Love,” a four-letter rap version of “Happy Birthday,” and 20-foot-long lines of cocaine chopped out along a dinner table in a scene that irreverently echoes Leonardo da Vinci‘s The Last Supper. Later in the story we encounter mountainous piles of trash shuffling across the stage on human legs, striking large-scale dance numbers in fluorescent masks, and a powerful wind machine that sends gusts of paper into the audience. She also writes picture books for children, and these include Underwater Farmyard (2002); Doris the Giant (2004); Moon Zoo (2005); The Tear Thief (2007); and The Princess's Blankets (2009).Higgins, Charlotte (7 December 2009). "Artist Richard Wright strikes gold as winner of this year's Turner prize". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 July 2013. a b "Prof Carol Ann Duffy". Manchester Metropolitan University. Archived from the original on 10 May 2013 . Retrieved 2 November 2009.

In 2011 Duffy, spearheaded a new poetry competition for schools, named Anthologise. The competition is administered by the Poetry Book Society and was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in September 2011. School students aged 11–18 from around the UK were invited to create and submit their own anthologies of published poetry. The 2011 Anthologise judges were Duffy; Gillian Clarke (National Poet for Wales); John Agard; Grace Nichols and Cambridge Professor of Children's Poetry, Morag Styles. The first ever winners of Anthologise were the sixth form pupils of Monkton Combe School, Bath, with their anthology titled The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead, which was described by Duffy as "assured and accomplished as any anthology currently on the bookshelves." [41] Plays and songs [ edit ] She was appointed as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009, [12] when Motion's 10-year term was over. Duffy was featured on the South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg in December 2009 [13] and on 7 December she presented the Turner Prize to artist Richard Wright. [14] Duffy’s verse has always married classical allusion with populist vernacular and this script typically encompasses Latin prayers and recitations of Liverpool football teams. Sharp-eared gags lie alongside an extraordinary final speech in which the dying man counts down his life from 40 to birth, with a memory for each year: “Nineteen. Doing tequila shots. Rat-arsed. Laughing.” The Faber play text merits reading separately as great poetry. In May and June, York, Chester, Coventry and other cities put on cycle plays that dramatised biblical narratives from Creation to Doomsday. Audiences could watch saints’ lives, plays about the cult hero Robin Hood, and morality plays such as Mankind, The Castle of Perseverance and Everyman in which good and evil battle it out for the hero’s soul.

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The plot is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his life. All the characters are also mystical; the conflict between good and evil is shown by the interactions between the characters. Everyman is being singled out because it is difficult for him to find characters to accompany him on his pilgrimage. Everyman eventually realizes through this pilgrimage that he is essentially alone, despite all the personified characters that were supposed necessities and friends to him. Everyman learns that when you are brought to death and placed before God, all you are left with are your own good deeds.