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by Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955) is a Scottish poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019 - the first woman and first openly LGBTQ+ person to hold the role. Her poetry often explores themes of identity, love, and the lives of women.
Before You Were Mine was published in Mean Time (1993). The poem is addressed to Duffy's mother, imagining her life as a young, glamorous woman in 1950s Glasgow before she became a parent.
The poem is inspired by a photograph of Duffy's mother as a young woman, laughing with friends. Duffy has said the photo made her realise her mother had a whole life and identity before motherhood.
The title reverses the expected parent-child dynamic: rather than a parent saying a child was born, the daughter possessively frames a time before her mother was hers - claiming ownership of her mother.
The poem raises questions about how motherhood changes identity, whether children have the right to claim their parents, and how we romanticise the past through photographs and imagination.
Editorial note: the poem is paraphrased line by line here rather than reproduced, because Duffy's work is in copyright. The short phrases quoted on this page were checked word for word against the text printed by the Scottish Poetry Library and in the AQA Love & Relationships anthology. Read the whole poem there, or in Carol Ann Duffy, Mean Time (Anvil Press, 1993).
“Before you were mine”
The title phrase appears twice in the poem, in the middle of the second stanza (line 9) and as its last words (line 20). It reverses parental possession: rather than a parent marking a child’s birth, the daughter claims a time before her mother belonged to her. Ending on the phrase gives the poem a circular shape, and its last word, "mine", is a claim of ownership.
“Marilyn.”
Line 5 ends on a one-word sentence. The name recalls Marilyn Monroe and her famous scene in a billowing white dress, so the mother, her spotted dress lifting round her legs, becomes a glamorous icon. The full stop isolates the name for dramatic force: the mother is confident, attractive and admired.
“fizzy, movie tomorrows”
The mother’s future is imagined as a young woman might picture it: "fizzy" like a drink full of bubbles, exciting and effervescent, and "movie" like a film, glamorous and full of romance. The unusual plural, "tomorrows", multiplies the possibilities. Motherhood was not the script she imagined for herself.
“loud, possessive yell”
The speaker describes her own newborn cry (line 11), which ended the decade she suggests was her mother’s best. "Possessive" names the poem’s central idea: from the moment she was born she claimed her mother. The casual question tag that closes the line teases, but it also admits the cost of her arrival.
“relics”
As a child the speaker puts her hands into her mother’s old red high heels (line 12). Calling them "relics" makes them the sacred remains of a vanished era, like the belongings of a saint: the glamorous past survives only in objects, and the daughter can reach it only through them.
“your ghost clatters”
The ghost of line 13 is not a dead person but the mother’s own younger self, and it is the daughter who is haunted: the usual pattern of haunting is turned round. "Clatters" gives the ghost the noise of high heels on stone, echoing the red shoes of the line before, so the memory of the shoes summons the young woman who wore them.
“stamping stars”
The mother teaches the child dance steps on the way home from Mass (lines 16 to 17), and their feet seem to strike stars from the pavement. The alliteration lets the steps be heard, and the image turns an ordinary walk home into something magical: for a moment the daughter meets the glamorous young woman inside the mother she knew.
“bold girl winking”
The speaker says that even as a child she wanted this earlier version of her mother (line 18), bold and flirtatious, seen at Portobello before the speaker was born. The verb of wanting is possessive: she claims a woman who existed before her, as though the mother belonged to her in every era.
“sparkle and waltz and laugh”
Three verbs joined by repeated conjunctions (polysyndeton) create a breathless, energetic rhythm, each catching a different quality: light, grace, joy. The glamorous love the speaker imagines lasts in this present tense, and line 20 ends on the title phrase, closing the poem’s circle.
“Marilyn.”
The reference to Marilyn Monroe casts the mother as a glamorous, desirable icon. It elevates her from an ordinary woman to a cultural figure, emphasising what was lost when she became a mother.
“possessive”
The speaker repeatedly claims ownership of her mother: in the title, in the possessive cry of line 11 and in the wanting of line 18. The possessive in the title sets the tone for a poem that treats the mother as the speaker’s possession, subverting the usual parent-child power dynamic.
“shriek”
Using the present tense for past events makes the mother's youth feel vivid, immediate and ongoing: the friends shriek with laughter in line 4 as if the photograph had started to move. The speaker imaginatively inserts herself into a past she never witnessed.
“sparkle and waltz and laugh”
The repeated conjunction creates a breathless, accelerating rhythm across three verbs. The mother’s energy seems unstoppable, each verb adding another facet of her vitality.
“fizzy, movie tomorrows”
The mother's future is described as fizzy (effervescent, intoxicating) and cinematic. This romanticised vision contrasts with the implied reality of domestic motherhood.
“your ghost clatters”
The mother's younger self becomes a ghost that haunts her daughter. This inverts the expected dynamic: it is not the dead who walk but a living woman's lost youth, and the child is the one who is haunted by it.
“legs. Marilyn.”
The full stop isolates the single-word allusion as a one-word sentence, giving it cinematic impact. The pause forces the reader to linger on the comparison, transforming an ordinary detail into a glamorous allusion.
“clear as scent”
The simile of line 14 mixes the senses: the speaker sees her mother as clearly as one smells a perfume, and scent is the sense most bound up with memory. The young mother is vivid and yet unseen, present only as a trace.
Simon Armitage
Both explore the mother-child bond. Duffy looks back possessively at her mother's past; Armitage looks forward to the moment of separation.
Charles Causley
Both idealise parents in a past setting. Causley places his parents in a heavenly picnic; Duffy places her mother in a glamorous 1950s world.
Maura Dooley
Both explore connection across distance. Duffy bridges time; Dooley bridges physical distance. Both find intimacy through imagination.