Examine how Duffy presents attitudes towards particular places in Stafford Afternoons
and one other poem of your choice. (Stafford afternoons & Never Go Back)
Within Stafford Afternoons and Never Go Back, Duffy presents attitudes to places as
negative and traumatic for the personas in both poems.
In Stafford Afternoons the persona is portraying a childhood trauma where she was sexually
harassed in the woods near her home. The voice is a first-person narrative of a child, and it
could be argued that the poem is auto biographical as Duffy grew up in Stafford. This is
different from Never Go Back, which is narrated by a woman who is going through a time of
despair, potentially after a divorce and portrays her visit to her hometown or the place she
lived when she was married. The voice is a second-person narrative which frequently uses
direct address throughout the poem through the personal pronoun ‘you’.
Within Stafford Afternoons, the child persona presents the place within the childhood
trauma as a dream-like fantasy through their use of colour imagery such as ‘green’, ‘silver’
‘purple’ ‘red’ ‘light’ ‘shade’ this reflects the child-like imagination and perception of the
world around them. The child persona also uses personification of nature to highlight this
dream-like fantasy such as ‘the trees drew sly faces’, ‘the wood let out it’s sticky breath’,
‘flowering nettles gathered spit in their throats’. The use of the cacophony ‘sticky’ and
negative modifiers and nouns such as ‘sly faces’, ‘spit’ depicts a nightmare like scene from a
fairy-tale which represents the feelings of danger the child persona feels within the
traumatic memory. A similar effect can be seen in Never Go back where the woman person
describes the town as having a decaying and bitter persona through her use of
personification such as ‘a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice’, ‘the streets tear litter in
their thin hands’, ‘a tired wind whistles.’ This depiction of the place creates a negative and
traumatic attitude as if the Persona has bitter and regretful feelings toward it.
The persona in never go back also depicts a sense of loss towards the place through the use
of parenthesis and metaphor ‘God this is an awful place says the friend, the alcoholic’ the
use of the post modifier ‘alcoholic’ is a metaphor for the decay and loss of the place as
alcohol is a degenerative and consuming substance. This links to the personification of the
persona’s old house within the town which she describes as ‘The house where you were one
of the brides has cancer. It prefers to be left alone’, ‘each groan and creek accusing as you
climb the stairs to the bedroom’ the use of the noun ‘cancer’ and the verb ‘accusing’ depicts
a sense of decay and loss as if the persona is responsible for the loss of health the house has
been subjected to. The declarative ‘where you were one of the brides’ also suggests that
this house is reminiscent of an old marriage and perhaps was the house where she lived
with her ex-husband. The use of direct address also enhances this and is supported by the
line ‘all the cries of love suddenly swarm in the room, sting you, disappear.’ This could be
referring to the memories of the marriage within the house which are now hurting the
persona emotionally as she revisits the rooms.
A similar example of negative emotions towards the place within Stafford Afternoons can be
seen in the use of declarative, plosive, and forceful minor sentences such as ‘I knew it was
dangerous’ and ‘Too late’ which depict a sense of regret in the voice of the child persona as
she is re-living the trauma within the place. This can also be seen in the phrase ‘time fell
from the sky like a red ball.’ As it represents a loss of innocence and a loss of childhood as
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