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On your desk · Poetry · Higher
Before You Were Mine
Carol Ann Duffy
The big picture
A daughter imagines her mother’s lively youth before motherhood. The poem admires the woman beyond the parental role while acknowledging the child’s possessive claim on her time and identity.
“my loud, possessive yell”
The daughter recognises the demands her arrival made. The blunt acknowledgement complicates a purely sentimental celebration and makes room for the mother’s independent desires.
- Whose voice are we hearing?
- A daughter addresses her mother directly, imaginatively entering a past she could not literally remember.
- How does it develop?
- Scenes from photographs and later childhood mingle across time. The recurring possessive phrase tests the assumption that a parent’s life belongs entirely to their child.
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