Poem 2: The Map Woman

Carol Ann Duffy, “The Map Woman”

A woman's skin was a map of the town

where she'd grown from a child.

When she went out, she covered it up

with a dress, with a shawl, with a hat,

with mitts or a muff, with leggings, trousers

or jeans, with a an ankle-length cloak, hooded

and fingertip-sleeved. But - birthmark, tattoo -

the A-Z street-map grew, a precise second skin,

broad if she binged, thin when she slimmed,

a précis of where to end or go back or begin.

 

Over her breast was the heart of the town,

from the Market Square to the Picture House

by way of St Mary's Church, a triangle

of alleys and streets and walks, her veins

like shadows below the lines of the map, the river

an artery snaking north to her neck. She knew

if you crossed the bridge at her nipple, took a left

and a right, you would come to the graves,

the grey-haired teachers of English and History,

the soldier boys, the Mayors and Councillors,

 

the beloved mothers and wives, the nuns and priests,

their bodies fading into the earth like old print

on a page. You could sit on a wooden bench

as a wedding pair ran, ringed, from the church,

confetti skittering over the marble stones,

the big bell hammering hail from the sky, and wonder

who you would marry and how and where and when

you would die: or find yourself in the coffee house

nearby, waiting for time to start, your tiny face

trapped in the window's bottle-thick glass like a fly.

 

 

And who might you see, short-cutting through

the Grove to the Square - that line there, the edge

of a fingernail pressed on her flesh - in the rain,

leaving your empty cup, to hurry on after

calling their name? When she showered, the map

gleamed on her skin, blue-black ink from a nib.

She knew you could scoot down Greengate Street,

huddling close to the High House, the sensible shops,

the Swan Hotel, till you came to the Picture House,

sat in the musty dark watching the Beatles

 

run for a train or Dustin Hoffman screaming

Elaine! Elaine! Elaine! or the spacemen in 2001

floating to Strauss. She sponged, soaped, scrubbed;

the prison and hospital stamped on her back,

the park neat on her belly, her navel marking the spot

where the empty bandstand stood, the river again,

heading south, clear as an operation scar,

the war memorial facing the railway station

where trains sighed on the platforms, pining

for Glasgow, London, Liverpool. She knew

 

you could stand on the railway bridge, waving

goodbye to strangers who stared as you vanished

into the belching steam, tasting future time

on the tip of your tongue. She knew you could run

the back way home - there it was on her thigh -

taking the southern road then cutting off to the left,

the big houses anchored behind their calm green lawns,

the jewels of conkers falling down at your feet,

then duck and dive down Nelson and Churchill

and Kipling and Milton Way until you were home.

 

She didn't live there now. She lived down south,

abroad, en route, up north, on a plane or train

or boat, on the road, in hotels, in the back of cabs,

on the phone; but the map was under her stockings,

under her gloves, under the soft silk scarf at her throat,

under her chiffon veil, a delicate braille. Her left knee

marked the grid of her own estate. When she knelt

she felt her father's house pressing into the bone,

heard in her head the looped soundtrack of then -

a tennis ball repeatedly thumping a wall,

an ice-cream van crying and hurrying on, a snarl

of children's shrieks from the overgrown land

where the houses ran out. The motorway groaned

just out of sight. She knew you could hitch

from Junction 13 and knew of a girl who had not

been seen since she did; had heard of a kid who'd run

across all six lanes for a dare before he was tossed

by a lorry into the air like a doll. But the motorway

was flowing away, was a roaring river of metal

and light, cheerio, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, ciao.

 

She stared in the mirror as she got dressed,

both arms raised over her head, the roads

for east and west running from shoulder

to wrist, the fuzz of woodland or countryside under

each arm. Only her face was clear, her fingers

smoothing in cream, her baby-blue eyes unsure

as they looked at themselves. But her body was certain,

an inch to the mile, knew every nook and cranny,

cul-de-sac, stile, back road, high road, low road,

one-way street of her past. There it all was, back

 

to front in the glass. She piled on linen, satin, silk,

leather, wool, perfume and mousse and went out.

She got in a limousine. The map perspired

under her clothes. She took a plane. The map seethed

on her flesh. She spoke in a foreign tongue.

The map translated everything back to herself.

She turned out the light and a lover's hands

caressed the map in the dark from north to south,

lost tourists wandering here and there, all fingers

and thumbs, as their map flapped in the breeze.

 

So one day, wondering where to go next,

she went back, drove a car for a night and a day,

till the town appeared on her left, the stale cake

of the castle crumbled up on the hill; and she hired

a room with a view and soaked in the bath.

When it grew dark, she went out, thinking

she knew the place like the back of her hand,

but something was wrong. She got lost in arcades,

in streets with new names, in precincts

and walkways, and found that what was familiar

 

was only facade. Back in her hotel room, she stripped

and lay on the bed. As she slept, her skin sloughed

like a snake's, the skin of her legs like stockings, silvery,

sheer, like the long gloves of the skin of her arms,

the papery camisole from her chest a perfect match

for the tissuey socks of the skin of her feet. Her sleep

peeled her, lifted a honeymoon thong from her groin,

a delicate bra of skin from her breasts, and all of it

patterned A to Z; a small cross where her parents' skulls

grinned at the dark. Her new skin showed barely a mark.

 

She woke and spread out the map on the floor. What

was she looking for? Her skin was her own small ghost,

a shroud to be dead in, a newspaper for old news

to be read in, gift-wrapping, litter, a suicide letter.

She left it there, dressed, checked out, got in the car.

As she drove, the town in the morning sun glittered

behind her. She ate up the miles. Her skin itched,

like a rash, like a slow burn, felt stretched, as though

it belonged to somebody else. Deep in the bone

old streets tunnelled and burrowed, hunting for home.

 

 

Key features/themes

The power of this poem partly lies in its combination of an impossible premise with detailed realism. The underlying metaphor – that we are indelibly marked by our own past, by our origins – is made literal by Duffy to disquieting effect.

Throughout the poem physical details pile up, bringing the woman’s predicament vividly to life. Layers of imagery mirror the woman’s different levels of self, working inwards through the course of the poem: it begins with clothing which tries to hide the map, moves onto her skin and an exploration of geography and location, before ending beneath the skin with a disturbing image which turns the woman’s body into earth ‘tunnelled and burrowed’ by the past. The relief of her new blank skin is short-lived, suggesting that the idea of ‘starting again’ is an illusion because we carry our past inside us.

Cultural references such as The Beatles and the Picture House locate the past Duffy so effectively captures to the post-war era of the 50s and 60s. She creates a kind of English Everytown from that period, with its motorways and sensible shops and its strict social hierarchies – mayor, councillors, teachers. The poet uses its geography to explore the social expectations and assumptions of that time, neatly summarised by the list of English heroes after whom the more affluent streets are named. The poem hints that it’s a society against which the woman chafed: images of boundaries – the river, the motorway, the trains ‘pining’ for the big cities – all suggest her sense of constraint.

The whole poem has a restlessness to it which reflects the woman’s attempts to escape her past. The prevalence of lists gives the poem a galloping tempo, as does the predominantly anapaestic rhythm. The poem’s sense of barely contained energy is also conveyed through Duffy’s extensive use of irregular rhyme and half rhyme. It’s perhaps significant, then, that the poem ends on an almost-couplet of ‘bone’ and ‘home’ – a sense of closure which, combined with the imagery, suggests the inescapable nature of the past.

Links to other poems  

Stylistically, Simon Armitage’s ‘Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass’ has interesting similarities with the Duffy poem and could prompt an interesting discussion around how social expectations are experienced differently by men and women. ‘Effects’ by Alan Jenkins provides a contrast in technique, exploring some of the same territory in a more realistic way.

Further resources

This recent interview with Duffy sees her reflecting on the Poet Laureateship halfway through her time in office and has some interesting insights: www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/27/carol-ann-duffy-poet-laureate-interview 

While this interview in the Telegraph from 2010 provides some candid insights into her life: www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7692436/Carol-Ann-Duffy-interview.html 

The British Council’s literature website has a succinct overview of her career: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/carol-ann-duffy