Before You Were Mine: A Poem by Carol Ann Duffy

A very clever poem that considers the role of motherhood from the perspective of the child who gradually comes to possess the mother

Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1955, as the eldest of five children. The family moved to Stafford, in the English Midlands, when she was six. She discovered a love of literature and writing when she was at school and was encouraged by her teachers to publish her work.

In 2009 she was appointed Poet Laureate, the first woman to occupy that role, and relinquished the position in 2019 when her ten-year appointment ended.

She is one of the most popular and approachable poets writing today in Great Britain.

The Poem

“Before You Were Mine”, published in 1993, poses questions about the role of motherhood, being seen from the perspective of a child who is looking back, as an adult, to the years before she was born and during her childhood. A predecessor Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth, wrote that “the child is father of the man”. Duffy is saying that “the child is mother of the woman”, but in a very different sense from what Wordsworth had in mind.