Before you were mine by Duffy

Poems to compare to (2)

- Follower: compare the admiration of the daughter in this poem with the admiration that the son in ‘Follower’ has for his father

- Eden Rock: Childhood memories

“the fizzy, movies tomorrows”

- Figurative language that suggests energy and exciting possibilities - she may have hoped for a life like a movie heroine

- A lot of the words and phrases used describe how exciting, fun and glamorous the narrator's mum's life was before the narrator was born.

“Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close”

- The narrator sees her mother as having freedom before she was born, but she was also restrained by her own mother

- The speaker believes that when she was born, she took control of her mum, and took away her freedom. This reverses the typical idea of children wanting to break free from their parents - in this poem, it's the child stopping the parent from having fun.

“whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?”

-Sounds like something a parent would say to their child, but here is the other way around.

-The speaker uses colloquial language to create an imaginary conversation with her mother - this suggests they have a close, familiar relationship.

Exciting language

A lot of the words and phrases used describe how exciting, fun and glamorous the narrator's mum's life was before the narrator was born.