The second verse is about the life of the mother before the child was born. It gives the impression that she had a very glamorous lifestyle, and that was maybe a rebel at heart. ‘I'm not here yet’ this is to show that the child was not born yet. ‘In the ballroom with the thousand eyes,’ this could be a glitter-ball with lots of mirrors on it, as she was in a dance. Or it could be the thousands of eyes staring into her from the sidelines as she danced. ‘I knew you would dance like that’. This could be the child, when it was not quite born yet, and so could feel the mother dancing. This is how the child knows that the mother is a dancer ‘Movie tomorrows the right walk home could bring’. This is maybe to show that the mother was maybe innocent and didn’t realize the consequences of the walk home. The next line is possibly about the mother, and showing her inner side, just having fun. ‘You reckon it’s worth it’ maybe she thinks that what happened on the walk home was worth the punishment from the mother.
The third verse. The time suddenly changes, and the child is already born. We know this as it starts with ‘The decade ahead of my loud possessive yell’; the decade ahead meaning that the child has been born, and lived, for a decade already. It mentions the ‘loud possessive yell’, being their cries when young. It starts to talk about the experiences that the pair had been through. ‘I remember my hands in those high heeled red shoes’ This could be the child rooting through the mothers dancing clothes. The next two lines are very confusing. They mention ghosts and a place called George Square. The last word has a question mark after it, as if they are trying to talk to the mother. ‘Whose small bites on your neck’ this could be related to walk home that went on in verse two. The small bites on the neck could be from lovebites.
The last verse sums up the life of the mother. ‘Stamping stars from the wrong pavement’. This could be that she was a star, but only in the child’s eye, and not anywhere else, therefore, she was a star, but walking on the streets of Portobello. ‘Where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine’ This could be the child questioning whether they made the mothers life worse as she stopped dancing. The line before that, maybe suggests that the child wanted to go back in time, and see their mother before they were born, as if to check if they did change the life at any point. ‘Where you sparkle and waltz’ this is referring to the mothers dancing.
I think that his poem takes a lot of thought and time to really find out what it means. There are lots of different explanations to what it could be about, and careful study of the verses is needed. It is very difficult to understand, and took me a while to understand the meaning
The title ‘Before you were mine’ is maybe to suggest that this was all going on before the child was born, and before the mother was the child’s. And if written in the child’s view, the title would become ‘Before you were mine’. The title is repeated several times so that the effect is then in, and thought goes on about the title and what it really means.
The structure of the poem is maybe that the birth of the child is drawing closer and closer. The start of the poem is ten years before; the second verse is when the mother is getting closer. Maybe the child was already there at the dance, but the mother doesn’t realize that. The third verse is when the baby is born and ten years later. The last verse is just the summary of the whole poem.
Sound effects are used in the last verse, in the first few words ‘Cha Cha Cha!’ this is used to show the readers that dance was in action.
The verses and sentence structure are all quite similar. The sentences in the verses are not all finishing on the same line, often running into others. The average verse is six lines long, with two lines and then just one word on the third line, and then another three lines. The first verse however doesn’t follow this pattern, as it is just five straight lines. The syllables in each line of the verse work out at an average of 11.5 per verse. This is not including the lines with just one or two syllables in it.
I think that the most effective verse is the second and forth verse. The second because it shows that the mother is a dancer, and enjoyed her life. It tells you that she was a bit of a rebel, as she came home late, and didn’t care. The forth verse is effective because the child is maybe questioning their existence. It says that they wanted the mother back from the old days, when she was bold and glamorous. Basically, it is saying that the mother has changed from when the child was born. We can tell this because if she hadn’t then the child wouldn’t want the mother back from the old days.
The child is probably looking at just the one picture, but the thoughts from that picture, bring back a lot more. They start to lead to other thoughts; these are shown as the different verses.
The whole poem seems very informal, as there are questions and the language suggests that they aren’t very ‘posh’. Words and phrases that suggest this to me are: - ‘eh?’ ‘Your ma stands at the close with a hiding for a late one’. They probably came from a ‘rough’ area, and like many other families, were quite poor.
In conclusion, I found this poem quite confusing, but nice to read. It took a while to find out the meaning, but I found it very interesting.
