Carol Ann Duffy - Before you were mine

“Before you were mine” uses first person and is written using the patterns of ordinary speech as if the poet is speaking directly to her mother. Although much of what she talks about takes place before Duffy was born she makes her presence felt by using 'I' to start many phrases. 'I'm ten years away.' The poet seems to have been stimulated to write after seeing an old photo of her mother enjoying herself with some girl friends when she was a teenager. The poem is written in the present tense as if the events of the photo are happening now. It is written in four equal stanzas of 5 lines each and in some ways each stanza is like looking at a photo from a photo album.

The readers can feel that they are deep in Duffy’s thoughts as she talks to her mother before she was born. Seeing the happy photo of her mother has clearly made her believe that her mother was happier before Duff was born. She begins the poem by setting the scene and portraying her mother to be romantic and attractive. Duffy does this by comparing her mother with Marilyn Monroe, this is when she talking about her “polka-dot dress” that “blows round your legs”. The internal rhyme in this quote was probably used to emphasize the similarity of her mother’s past and make it seem as real as possible. This word creates the imagery of champagne and therefore it might portray her bubbly character. “I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on with your pals […]” The use of enjambment, may have been used to stress the importance of how long ago it was when her mother was a teenager. Duffy fantasizes about her mother as she is imagined “in the ballroom with the thousand eyes.” Here, the use of ambiguity of “the thousand eye” which could be representing the glitter balls in the room but could also be the thousand eyes of men admiring her mother. Duffy creates a positive and bright atmosphere in this particular part of the poem. This helps to make the readers think how happy her mother must have