The Full Text of “In Your Mind”
The Full Text of “In Your Mind”
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“In Your Mind” Introduction
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The British poet Carol Ann Duffy published "In Your Mind" in her 1990 collection The Other Country. Like many of the poems of this collection, "In Your Mind" explores the startling journeys people can undertake within their own imaginations. The poem's speaker describes mentally leaving behind a drab, rainy day at work in England in order to venture to some "other country," implied to be the place they grew up (or at least spent a chunk of their younger years). The poem suggests the powerful way that memory and imagination can transport people to bygone times and places, resulting in a poignant mix of emotions when the daydreamer must return to real life.
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“In Your Mind” Summary
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The speaker, daydreaming about some other country, wonders if this is a place they're hoping to go one day or a place from their past that they're vaguely remembering. It's an autumn afternoon in England, and the endless rain makes it difficult to understand the words coming from this other place. Within the speaker's imagination, they're leaving work and going to the airport. They bring money and a thick jacket, which they won't need when they get off the plane. They describe the past slowly disappearing just as newspaper ink fades in the sunshine.
The speaker knows people in this other country but their faces are hard to make out, like pictures that aren't in front of their eyes but behind them. In the speaker's mind, a handsome young man is pouring them a drink at the bar by the water. The speaker's train of thought is suddenly interrupted by the question "what?"; this might be the speaker wondering what drink they'd ordered in this imagined/remembered scene or responding to the bartender, who has just asked if the speaker thinks human beings could ever really set foot on the moon (implying that this is a memory of a scene that took place sometime before the moon landing of 1969). The speaker reflects that the moon looks like a child's drawing of an orange and then insists that people could never land on it. The moon sets over the horizon like an orange unpeeling into the water.
The speaker imagines falling asleep and then getting woken up by the harsh sounds of someone woodworking. They spot a painting they haven't seen in thirty years hanging on the wall, which makes them realize that they're in their old bedroom. It all makes sense now to the speaker, who envisions heading out to a job that they love—turning right at the old inn, then left, and then left again. Sounds that feel appropriate to the setting signal the passage of time: the cry of seagulls, the ringing of bells, someone practicing their scales on the flute. The speaker buys a fish as they head home from work.
All of a sudden, the speaker feels both as if they've gotten off track and also as if they know exactly where they are. They linger on a blue bridge, looking down as six swans disappear below them. Knowing a place so well makes the whole town feel brighter and its smells more intense. Briefly, the speaker feels like they're actually in that other place, whose name they know. But, just like that, they're snapped back to their desk, their newspaper, and the English rain falling outside the window.
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“In Your Mind” Themes
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The Power of Memory and Imagination
"In Your Mind" explores the astonishing power of memory and imagination. Although the speaker is sitting at "a desk" on a dreary autumn afternoon in England, within their mind they're leaving behind their "work" and the drab "English rain" for "the other country": their own remembered past. The poem's vivid descriptions suggest that memory and imagination are mighty forces, able to transport people to lost places and times in the blink of an eye—and to offer both consolation and bittersweet regret.
Stuck at a desk on a drab fall day, the speaker escapes confinement by daydreaming that they're "head[ing] for the airport / with a credit card and a warm coat." They will "leave [the coat] on the plane," implying that they won't need it where they're going. In other words, as the "rain" comes down around them, they're dreaming of escaping to a sunnier climate—and, symbolically speaking, to happier times.
The speaker's imagined visit to this "other country" is more powerful than any normal vacation because it's not limited by time or space. In their imagination, the speaker can instantaneously travel to places that are both "anticipated" and "half-remembered"—places they want to go and places they've already been.
In this instance, it seems as if the speaker is visiting their own past: they remark that they "know people there" and see a "painting" in an imagined room that was "lost for thirty years," hinting at memories of youth. Mentioning the pleasure of "a beautiful boy" making them "a drink in the bar on the harbour" and the feeling of being "lost but not lost, dawdling / on the blue bridge," the speaker suggests that they’re longing for a youthful romance and freedom missing from their current life, where they are now tied to their desk.
The speaker's journey to the past can't last: at the end of the poem, the speaker has to return to the reality of "a desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain," giving their journey to happier, younger days an edge of sorrow. That journey has been moving and absorbing, though, and while it lasts, it gives the speaker a real respite from the dullness of routine. Memory and imagination, the poem suggests, are astonishingly powerful forces, able to carry people across the boundaries of space and time and offering bittersweet pleasure.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-24
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “In Your Mind”
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Lines 1-3
The other country, ...
... autumn in England,"In Your Mind" begins with the speaker posing a question:
The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?
This question, along with the title, frames the poem: the speaker's body is in one place, but their mind is somewhere else. The speaker isn't entirely sure if this "other country" they're thinking about is "anticipated," a place the speaker wants to go, or "half-remembered," a place they've already been and are recalling bits and pieces of.
What is clear is that this country is a specific place; not "an other country" but "the other country." The speaker isn't daydreaming about any old location, but one that's important to them. (The phrase "The other country" also just so happens to be the title of the collection in which this poem was published!)
Not incidentally, the caesura created by the comma after "country" forces the reader to pause ever so slightly after this opening phrase. While the sentence could have been arranged differently ("Is the other country anticipated or half-remembered?"), the choice of syntax places greater emphasis on the poem's subject.
And yet, the speaker also isn't sure if this place is entirely real or imagined! Perhaps this is the country of their youth, a place they left so long ago that they aren't even sure that it ever existed.
In any case, the speaker then says that the "language" of this "other country" is "muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon." Notice the use of /f/ and /l/ consonance here, which evokes the soft patter of rain outside the speaker's window. As a constant reminder of the speaker's present circumstances, this makes it more difficult for the speaker to "hear" the other country.
Line 2 is enjambed, propelling the reader into the next line where the poem's setting is revealed:
Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon
one autumn in England [...]The speaker is thus daydreaming during a rainy fall afternoon in England (a famously rainy place).
Finally, notice how there's no set meter or rhyme scheme in these lines. The poem is written in free verse: it moves naturally, closely imitating the way people actually think—fitting for a poem that takes place in someone's mind!
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Lines 3-6
and in your ...
... in the sun. -
Lines 7-12
You know people ...
... into the sea. -
Lines 13-14
Sleep. The rasp ...
... the room yours. -
Lines 15-18
Of course. You ...
... the way home. -
Lines 19-22
Then suddenly you ...
... For a moment -
Lines 23-24
you are there, ...
... window. English rain.
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“In Your Mind” Symbols
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Rain
The poem opens and closes with rain falling outside the speaker's window. This rain symbolizes the drab, inescapable reality of the speaker's life in the present.
In the poem's first stanza, the speaker says that the patter of "the rain which falls all afternoon" dulls the "language" of the "other country" they're trying to visit within their mind. The sound of the rain distracts the speaker, in other words; the rain is constant, and it makes it hard to think about anything else.
This rain is specifically linked with England in the poem, a place that's notoriously drizzly. Perhaps, then, the speaker is a foreigner—a person who grew up in a sunnier, dryer place, and for whom the rain is linked with the sense of loneliness and alienation they feel in their adopted homeland. Or, maybe, they're just recalling a trip or extended holiday that offered respite from the drizzle.
The phrase "English rain" then ends the entire poem. While the speaker was briefly able to escape the confines of their work and desk in England through their memory/imagination, they're pulled back to the rain—to their reality—in the poem's final moments.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 2-3: “Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon / one autumn in England”
- Line 24: “And then a desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain.”
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“In Your Mind” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration adds music and emphasis to the poem's language. In doing so, it highlights the bittersweet nature of the speaker's daydreams: these reveries are lovely and lyrical, yet also distant and fleeting.
Alliteration also makes certain moments and images feel more important. In lines 5-6, for example, sharp /c/ and /p/ alliteration make the image of the speaker flying away from England sound all the more exciting and intense:
with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave
on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.Alliteration often works alongside the related devices consonance and assonance to make the poem's language even more powerful. Take lines 8-9:
on the wrong side of your eyes. A beautiful boy
in the bar on the harbour [...]The intensity of the poem's language sticks out to the readers' ears, just as this image sticks out in the speaker's mind. The same thing happens with "blue bridge" and "six swans" in the poem's final stanza: alliteration calls attention to these very specific images, highlighting how clearly they appear in the speaker's imagination.
Elsewhere in the poem, sonic devices convey the actual sounds of the scene the speaker is imagining. Take lines 13-15, where growling /r/, popping /p/, and hissing /s/ sounds (in the form of both alliteration and internal consonance) evoke the "rasp of carpentry" that the speaker describes:
Sleep. The rasp of carpentry wakes you. On the wall,
a painting lost for thirty years renders the room yours.Similarly, the poem essentially turns up the volume on its own language in lines 16-18 in order to convey the intensity of all the "sounds" the speaker hears on their imagined walk to and from their old job. There's alliteration ("passing"/ "practicing," "sounds"/Seagulls"/"scales"/"swap," "for a fish," etc.) plus plenty of consonance and assonance ("Apt"/"passing"/"practicing," "Seagulls"/"bells"/"flute," etc.). All these repetitive sounds make the passage more melodic, suggesting that the speaker finds all these familiar noises pleasant and comforting.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 5: “credit,” “card,” “coat”
- Line 6: “plane,” “past”
- Line 7: “people,” “faces,” “photographs”
- Line 8: “beautiful,” “boy”
- Line 9: “bar”
- Line 11: “No”
- Line 12: “Never,” “itself,” “sea”
- Line 13: “Sleep,” “rasp,” “wakes,” “wall”
- Line 14: “renders,” “room”
- Line 17: “Seagulls”
- Line 18: “scales,” “swap”
- Line 20: “blue,” “bridge,” “six,” “swans”
- Line 22: “town,” “turns”
- Line 23: “knowing,” “name”
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Simile
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Repetition
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Parataxis
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Metaphor
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"In Your Mind" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Carpentry
- Rasp
- Renders
- Apt sounds
- Dawdling
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(Location in poem: Line 13: “The rasp of carpentry wakes you.”)
Woodworking.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “In Your Mind”
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Form
"In Your Mind" consists of 24 lines of free verse, broken up into four sestets (six-line stanzas). Frequent enjambment, parataxis, and caesura create a poem that feels at once choppy and fluid; readers get the sense of the speaker's thoughts meandering from one remembered scene to the next, yet these scenes themselves are fragmented—filled with fleeting, disparate images. Together, all these images create the impression of a place, an outline rather than a detailed drawing.
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Meter
As a free verse poem, "In Your Mind" doesn't use a regular meter. This makes sense for a poem about the transportive powers of the imagination and the meandering nature of memory. The freedom of the poem's language conveys the freedom of the speaker's mind, which jumps between one image and the next without sticking to a prescribed rhythm.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "In Your Mind" doesn't use a rhyme scheme. As with the poem's lack of meter, this keeps the language feeling intimate and free, as though readers are getting a peek into the speaker's thoughts in real time.
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“In Your Mind” Speaker
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The speaker of "In Your Mind" is someone who currently lives and works in England. The poem implies that they're either not originally from England or that they spent a fair amount of time abroad in their younger years.
When the poem begins, the speaker is stuck at their desk on a rainy English afternoon, daydreaming about going on a trip where they can leave their "warm coat" behind. At first, it sounds like they might just be in need of a tropical getaway. But as the poem goes on, it becomes clear that the speaker is imagining going to a specific "country" and to a specific time in their own past.
They envision drinking at a "bar on the harbor" (served by a "beautiful boy," no less) and "dawdling" on a "blue bridge." Earlier in life, the poem goes on to reveal, the speaker had a job they truly enjoyed (as opposed to one they daydream through now). These details suggest that the speaker is nostalgic for romance and freedom, for a time when they could leisurely stroll around a coastal town and find pleasure in their work.
It's also possible that the speaker is mixing memory with fantasy here—that some of these details represent experiences the speaker actually had, while others are things the speaker longs for but hasn't actually known. Either way, the speaker is clearly not fulfilled by their current life in England.
At the poem's end, the speaker is pulled back into the present—to their "desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain." Their mental venture can only provide a brief escape.
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“In Your Mind” Setting
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"In Your Mind" essentially has two different settings: the place where the speaker's physical body is, and the "other country" they travel to in their mind.
In the real world, the speaker is sitting at a desk by a window on a rainy autumn afternoon in England. But in their mind, they're boarding a plane to a sunnier, warmer locale. They don't name this "country" outright, but they do describe drinking at a "bar on the harbour" and watching the moon "peel itself" like "[an orange] into the sea."
A boy asks them about human beings reaching the moon, implying that this is a scene from the speaker's memory that occurred sometime shortly before the moon landing of 1969 (when space travel would certainly have been on people's minds).
The setting shifts again in the third stanza, when the speaker "Sleep[s]" and "wakes" in a familiar room (probably their childhood bedroom, given that on the wall hangs a painting they haven't seen in "thirty years").
At this point, they seem certain of where they are: they follow the familiar path to their old job (which they "love"), listening to the sounds of seagulls, church bells, and someone practicing the flute. They're clearly in some sort of sea-adjacent town or city.
In the final stanza, the speaker finds themselves "dawdling / on the blue bridge." The article "the" (as opposed to "a") suggests that this is a specific bridge, one the speaker knows well. They notice "six swans" disappearing under the bridge they're standing on. The number six is again painstakingly specific. The speaker "know[s] the name" of the place where they are, though they never reveal it to the reader.
In the final line, the speaker returns to the first setting established at the beginning of the poem: "And then a desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain." Physically, they have been at this desk staring out at the rain all along. It's only in their mind that they ever left.
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Literary and Historical Context of “In Your Mind”
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Literary Context
"In Your Mind" appears in Carol Ann Duffy's third poetry collection, The Other Country. Published in 1990, The Other Country explores themes related to emigration, nostalgia, delusion, and the journey from childhood to adulthood.
"In Your Mind," with its wanderlust-ing speaker who's nostalgic for a time and place to which they no longer have access, fits right into this collection (and, in fact, includes the collection's title in its opening line!). Other poems from The Other Country such as "Originally," "In Mrs Tilscher's Class," and "The Darling Letters" feature similarly thoughtful, poignant musings on time, change, and longing.
Duffy has cited numerous poets as early influences for her own work, including canonical Irish and English poets like W.B. Yeats and John Keats, modernist poets including Aimé Césaire, and the groundbreaking American poet Sylvia Plath, whose influence Duffy has written about. A lesbian writer in an often conservative, male-dominated literary culture, Duffy herself has blazed trails in her exploration of women's and LGBTQ narratives in contemporary UK poetry.
In 2009 Duffy became the first woman, the first Scottish poet, and the first openly LGBTQ person to become Poet Laureate of the UK. Along with Seamus Heaney, she is now one of the most widely taught poets in UK schools and her work is renowned for its empathy and sharp-edged insights into contemporary life.
Historical Context
Carol Ann Duffy was born in Scotland and emigrated to England as a small child. Her own feelings of displacement and homesickness almost certainly informed the wistful tone of "In Your Mind."
The speaker's conversation with the bartender in which they speculate about the possibility of "men [landing] on the moon" further suggests that the speaker can remember a time before Neil Armstrong took that first historic step in 1969. Duffy herself was born in 1955 and would have been a teenager when this happened, so it's possible that some of the scenes in this poem were inspired by Duffy's own childhood in "[an]other country."
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More “In Your Mind” Resources
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External Resources
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A Synopsis of The Other Country — Check out the publisher's synopsis of Duffy's third collection of poetry, in which "In Your Mind" first appeared.
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The Poet's Life and Legacy — A biography of Duffy from the Poetry Foundation.
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A Look at the Poet's Career — A Guardian article discussing Duffy's poetic projects, influences, and the central themes that run through her work.
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Duffy's Poet Laureate Acceptance Speech — An interview with Carol Ann Duffy where she talks about her role and responsibility as the UK's first female/LGBTQ poet laureate.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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