The Way My Mother Speaks (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

This study guide to Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘The Way My Mother Speaks’ contains:

• Overview

• Authorial purpose

• Authorial choices and textual features

• Themes

• Connections to other Duffy poems

Overview

• The poem was first published in 1990 in the collection The Other Country

• The collection explores notions of home, belonging and identity

• Duffy describes a literal and metaphoric journey on a train as she leaves childhood and home behind

• Her mother’s way of speaking echoes in her mind:

  • It brings her comfort and a connection to home and her identity

Authorial purpose

• Duffy’s aim is to explore the personal and universal concept of change

• The poem details a train journey:

  • The journey transports the speaker from the north to the south

  • This echoes Duffy’s real-life move from Scotland to England

• The journey is also metaphorical as the speaker journeys from childhood to adulthood

• In both understandings of the journey, the speaker feels complex emotions

• Her mother’s voice and way of speaking give her comfort:

  • Duffy’s mother was Irish-Scottish

  • Duffy is interested in how voice is connected to identity

Authorial choices and textual features

Form and Structure

• ‘The Way My Mother Speaks’ is a free verse poem:

  • However, internal rhyme and repetition make parts of the poem sound like a train moving

• It has three stanzas of differing lengths

• Duffy uses enjambment to mimic the speaker’s thoughts

• The tone veers from anxious to excited

Language

• The way the speaker’s mother speaks becomes an extended metaphor for her roots and identity:

• The repeated phrases (‘I say her phrases to myself’) suggest the mother’s voice is not just remembered which suggests identity as something inherited rather than chosen

• The speaker uses imagery (opens in a new tab)of the sky and a pond to convey complex emotions:

  • The contrast implies a movement from optimism to uncertainty or melancholy

• The train journey symbolises change in place and in stages of life:

  • The journey structure mirrors the movement from certainty (home) to ambiguity (new identity)

• Paradox expresses the universal conflicting emotions around immense change:

  • The paradoxes universalise the experience, making the personal journey relatable

  • The phrase ‘homesick, free, in love’ implies that identity change involves both loss and liberation

• Duffy uses assonance to link concepts: 

  • The soft sound patterns contribute to a reflective tone, suggesting memory and introspection

Themes

The importance of belonging

Duffy is personally interested in the sense of belonging. As a Scottish, queer woman writing poetry in a male-dominated English culture, she experiences feelings of marginalisation and Othering. She is also interested in how national politics allow or limit some members of society from feeling a sense of belonging. In the poem, her mother’s voice contrasts with feelings of anxiety; it gives the speaker comfort, confidence and the ability to deal with change. The voice is both personal to Duffy and her Scottish roots and universal as a metaphor for home.  

Connections to other Duffy poems

When studying Duffy’s poetry, it is important to make connections across her work, as many poems explore similar ideas through different speakers and situations.

Change

Postmodernist poetry is interested in fractured selves, plurality and identity that is not fixed. Duffy frequently explores how the self transforms through life experiences. Duffy often compares a complicated present with a more favourable past. The past becomes a place longed for. Frequently, the loss of youth is paired with a loss of beauty, joy or love. However, she complicates this by presenting her changed speakers as more full of knowledge and understanding of themselves; change in Duffy’s poetry is sometimes painful but also empowering. 

Sources:

‘The Way My Mother Speaks’ by Carol Ann Duffy https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-way-my-mother-speaks/ (opens in a new tab)