Duffy explores different kinds of relationships in ‘Valentine’ and ‘Before you were mine’. How does she reveal her thoughts and feelings about these relationships to the reader?

will stay on your lips' - like a kiss from a lover. A kiss doesn't actually stay on your

lips, but the memory of a first kiss with a person that you love can stay in your

mind forever, it is something you may never forget. This is all use of an extended

metaphor - the onion.

In 'Before You Were Mine', the love that is discussed is different - the love

between a mother and her daughter - parental love. Duffy explains how she has

always admired her mother. She does this by using snapshots of her mother's

past to make the reader conjure up an image in their head 'I'm ten years away

from the corner you laugh on' - this example is talking about the way her mother

used to hang around on street corners with her friends.

Both poems use language and structure to make the reader think. In line 14 of

'Valentine', Duffy uses the word 'Fierce' to describe the taste of an onion. The

word sticks out from the poem as it is a harsh, angry term to use in an otherwise

calmly-worded poem. This technique is used throughout the poem.

In line 19, Duffy is describing the way that a partner will get closer to you as you

continue with a relationship, and in the same way, as you get nearer the centre of

an onion, the rings - i.e. wedding rings - get smaller and if you placed them on

your finger - like a wedding ring - the more rings you took off the onion, the closer

fit it would be. The word she uses to describe this is 'shrink'. In the word 'shrink',

there is a rather hard-sounding 'K' sound at the end, this sound is used to

highlight the importance of this line in the poem.

The idea of powerful language is used again in 'Before You Were Mine' to

describe Duffy's admiration for her mother. You can see this right the way

through the poem for example, 'shriek' in line 4 is a very hard-sounding word to

use in a soft-sounding poem, this emphasises the line and it's importance to the

rest of the pavement.

'Before You Were Mine' has no rhyme scheme as it is written in free verse. Duffy

probably wrote the poem like this because it is the way that people speak, and

the poem is written in the voice of someone talking to her mother, similarly, there

is no rhythm in the text, for the same reason.

'Valentine' is written in a similar way to 'Before You Were Mine', as it also uses

free verse. This is because, again, it is one person speaking to another, and that

is how people speak to one another - without rhyme or rhythm.

Although written in free verse, 'Valentine' still has a definite structure to it. The

line 'I give you an onion' is repeated, for emphasis on it's importance in the

poem - the extended metaphor used throughout the poem.

Sorry Miss., I'm still a bit stuck with what to write after this - also, it's 22:34 :)