Form and structure
Like much of Duffy’s work, the poem has a regular structure and the three stanzas of eight lines help to divide the poem into a straightforward chronology.
Stanza one recalls the journey from Glasgow towards her new home, Stanza two explores her initial sense of not fitting in to this new landscape.
In the third stanza she considers the larger question about how our sense of identity is formed, shaped and affected by such transitions.
However, underneath this apparently ordered structure, the poet’s anxiety and uncertainty is revealed through the lack of a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme which reinforces the lack of order in her own life at this time.
The fact that the poem is mainly composed of a series of fragmented memories, occasionally using deliberately childish words or phrases, is reminiscent of the way most of us recall our own childhood and adds to the authenticity of the poem.