ORIGINALLY+CAROL+ANN+DUFFY

ALL MRS ADAMS' ORIGINALLY NOTES & REVISION HELP



Carol Ann Duffy
We came from our own country in a red room

which fell through the fields, our mother singing

our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.

[[image:aimhigherscotland/SPL Poster Originally Carol Ann Duffy.png width="338" height="480" align="right"]]
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,

Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,

the street, the house, the vacant rooms

where we didn’t live any more. I stared

at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw. All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,

leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue

where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.

Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,

leading to unimagined, pebble­-dashed estates, big boys

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">in my head. I want our own country, I said. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">shedding its skin like a snake, my voice

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

[|LISTEN TO AN ORIGINALLY PODCAST]









<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #0c20d4; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 20.8px;">Here also is a link to the BITESIZE Revision page on <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #e60808; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 20.8px;">ORIGINALLY

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #e60808; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 20.8px;">[|Click for ORIGINALLY]