Summary, Structure & Form

English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Love & Relationships, topic 12.1.1

Summary of Before You Were Mine

Carol Ann Duffy's poem Before You Were Mine tracks the relationship of the poet's mother with her own mother.

Duffy was born in Glasgow in 1955.
Duffy was formerly the Poet Laureate.
This poem shifts between the past and the present in a fluid manner, encompassing both the life of Duffy’s mother in the past and their relationship in the present.

The poem begins in an uncertain time frame – Duffy is in the present but she is looking at a photograph from the past of her mother with her friends.
The narrator goes on to imagine her mother’s life before she was born, informed by photographs and stories her mother has told her.
The narrator considers how her mother’s happiest years were in the 10 years before she was born.
The poem ends with the narrator’s own childhood, in which she fondly remembers her mother teaching her how to dance.

Duffy explores parental relationships in an innovative way in this poem – imagining her mother’s life before she had her and exploring what she gave up to be a mother.
Through this layered interpretation of her life, Duffy tries to imagine her mother as a whole person – beyond her role as a parent and care giver.
Duffy also recognises her mother's deep love for her – as she has given up these pursuits of her youth to care for her.

Here are some key features of the structure and form in Before You Were Mine:

The poem has a circular structure.
The narrator describes her mother on the pavement in both the first and last stanza. The difference is that, in the first stanza, the narrator was 'not here yet'.
A contrast is also drawn between the narrator's mother having fun and laughing with her friends, and then teaching her daughter how to dance.

The poem is set out in four equal stanzas, showing the steady passage of time.
But within these stanzas, Duffy shifts from her present to her mother’s past – ‘I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on’ and ’now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square’.
Past and present merge to create a portrait of her mother.

Summary of Before you Were Mine
Has Carol Ann Duffy ever been Poet Laureate?
What time frames does the poem Before You Were Mine focus on?
How does Carol Ann Duffy create the circular structure in Before You Were Mine?