Foreign Summary & Analysis
by Carol Ann Duffy

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  • “Foreign” Introduction

    • "Foreign" appears in Carol Ann Duffy's collection Selling Manhattan (1987). The poem urges readers to imagine themselves as an immigrant who has lived for 20 years in their adopted country. In the scenario the poem sketches, "you" still live at the margins of society, miss your homeland, struggle with your adopted language, and face prejudice from native residents. Without invoking a specific country or period, the poem encourages readers to empathize with "foreign" communities in their own societies.

  • “Foreign” Summary

    • The speaker urges you, the reader, to imagine living for two decades in a drab foreign city. You live in one of the various dreary buildings on the city's east side. When you talk on a landing of your building's staircase, you can hear your foreign-sounding voice echo in the stairwell. Although you speak in your adopted language, you think in your native language.

      The speaker tells you to imagine writing a letter home. Your inner voice speaks the words you're writing in the local variant of your native language, which, in turn, makes you think of the distant sound of your mom's singing. You start to cry, but you're not sure why, and you can't even think of the word for "crying."

      You ride public transportation (i.e., buses and metros), go to work, and then go to sleep. One night (the speaker asks you to imagine), you noticed a name for your ethnic/racial group spelled in red graffiti on a brick wall. It was a slur written in blood-red paint. Now, snow is falling in the neon-lit streets of the city, as if your adopted country were crumbling right in front of you.

      Occasionally, in the deli, you still get confused by the local currency. Unable to communicate properly, because this new country still isn't home, you gesture toward the fruit you want to buy. Either you or the deli worker says (in awkward-sounding grammar), "I can't understand these people. It's like they're not even fully conscious." The speaker again urges you to imagine what this would be like.

  • “Foreign” Themes

    • Theme Immigration and Alienation

      Immigration and Alienation

      "Foreign" invites readers to imagine themselves as an immigrant in an unfamiliar and often hostile country. The poem depicts a series of common challenges experienced by immigrants, including learning a new language and currency, missing one's home, struggling financially, and encountering xenophobia. In describing these experiences in ominous, even nightmarish terms, the speaker links life at the social margins with a profound sense of alienation and disorientation. Being "foreign," the poem suggests, can cut people off not only from those around them but from their own identity and sense of reality.

      The poem shows how being "foreign" makes everyday life more complicated, stressful, and isolating. When you're a non-native speaker of the language surrounding you, the poem observes, you "think" in a different language than you "talk" in—undoubtedly a confusing sensation that would make it hard to communicate (and thus to get to know locals or have them get to know you). Even after "twenty years," you might still be confused by things like currency ("coins" that "will not translate") and feel “[i]narticulate” while trying to do something as simple as buy a piece of “fruit.”

      You don't always have the ability to name, and thus recognize, your own emotions, either. For example, when tearing up, you might struggle to think of "the word for" crying. The poem thus shows how being “foreign” can make even the most familiar items and experiences seem frustratingly alien.

      For these reasons, an immigrant's adopted homeland can remain "strange," never becoming a true “home.” Illustrating this idea, the poem asks readers to imagine a foreigner living in the same "dismal dwellings" for decades, on a particular "side" of the city—in other words, leading an impoverished, isolated life at the social margins. That life itself becomes nothing but a lonely, exhausting routine: "You use the public transport. Work. Sleep," the speaker says, just getting by rather than really living.

      And when you do think of your actual "home,” the poem continues, you hear "your mother singing": an image of the kind of welcoming, loving environment that now seems lost for good. At its worst, the poem suggests, the experience of "foreignness" can be a sort of trauma, like separation from one's mother as a child.

      It’s not just that foreigners themselves struggle to fit in, however, but that society actively excludes them. The poem describes hateful graffiti directed at foreigners, making the current environment seem not only alienating but menacing. You might encounter hateful language and recognize it as "a name for yourself," the speaker says—“a hate name." This detail further suggests that society's suspicion of foreigners is part of what keeps them trapped in a cycle of alienation and frustration.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-20
    • Theme Xenophobia, Intolerance, and Miscommunication

      Xenophobia, Intolerance, and Miscommunication

      The poem depicts a scenario in which an immigrant still struggles with their adopted country's language and practices after 20 years. At the same time, that country has never fully accepted this person or bridged that cultural divide: in fact, its "hate" for foreigners seems to be getting worse. The poem then imagines an encounter between this foreigner and a deli worker in which both parties seem unable to communicate—and at least one of whom seems unable to empathize with the other. By helping readers "Imagine" this scenario and identify with the "foreigner" (whom the speaker refers to as "you" throughout), the poem illustrates the cruelty of intolerance and encourages the kind of empathy that curbs it.

      The poem shows how linguistic and cultural barriers can become barriers to empathy and humanity by imagining an encounter between an immigrant and a deli worker (who might be a native resident or an immigrant from a different culture), in which "one of you" complains: "Me not know what these people mean. / It like they only go to bed and dream."

      Either one of these people or both fail to grasp or appreciate the inner reality of the other. That is, they don’t consider that the person they’re talking to is a full, unique human being rather than just one of the “these people.” Notice, too, how the ungrammatical speech here resembles the kind often assigned to cavemen and "primitive" peoples in popular culture, perhaps evoking crude stereotypes of foreigners and the crudeness of intolerance itself.

      In extreme cases, the poem thus suggests, cultural divides and misunderstandings can generate an almost primitive fear and hatred. Further illustrating this, the poem mentions a "hate name" sprayed "Red like blood" on a public wall: an image of savage cruelty toward strangers. The hate speech is framed as a possible sign that "this [place] is coming to bits"—that is, intolerance and social divisions are plunging society into chaos.

      Yet by urging readers to "Imagine" this situation, the poem promotes empathy and understanding over the kind of misunderstanding it portrays. The poem's details help put readers in the "foreigner's" shoes and better understand certain parts of the immigrant experience. And the suggestion that "this place" might be "coming to bits" is a warning that if cultural barriers aren't bridged, they can destroy societies. The dry closing words, "Imagine that," drive home a key irony: this whole "imagined" scenario often reflects reality. But "Imagine that" can also be taken literally and sincerely: that is, the poem wants readers to keep empathizing with "foreigners," marginalized people, etc. and considering the challenges they face.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 4-5
      • Lines 11-20
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Foreign”

    • Lines 1-5

      Imagine living in ...
      ... talk in theirs.

      The first stanza establishes the poem's setting, as well as its main character: "you." These opening fives lines begin to sketch a particular immigrant story, asking "you" to adopt this "Foreign" person's perspective and "Imagine" their experience.

      In the scenario the poem lays out, "you" have been living in the same "strange, dark" foreign city "for twenty years." It seems you have struggled financially, possibly as a result of discrimination, because even after two decades, you're still living among "dismal dwellings on the east side" of the city. The poem never specifies a geographical location or time period, so it's hard to know exactly what "the east side" holds, but the general idea is that it's a poorer or less desirable part of town. It may be an area that residents have a hard time escaping due to exclusion and lack of opportunity elsewhere.

      However, it doesn't seem to be a community of immigrants like yourself, since you're acutely aware of your "foreign[ness]" in this environment. In the stairwell of your building, "you hear / your foreign accent echo," as if the walls are throwing your difference back in your face. Even after two decades, you haven't fully adjusted to your adopted country's culture: "You think / in a language of your own and talk in theirs." You feel divided against yourself—and divided from the native residents, too: the collective "th[em]" who seem like foreigners to you.

      This opening establishes the poem's form: cinquain stanzas with lines of roughly even length, but no meter or rhyme. Frequent enjambment and caesuras give the lines a halting rhythm, and the diction is generally plain. These effects help evoke the difficulty of speaking in a second language, guiding the reader into the mindset of the "you" the poem describes. If the language were smoothly rhythmic, elaborately rhymed, and full of fancy vocabulary, it wouldn't fit the character or subject matter well. Moreover, cinquain stanzas are relatively uncommon in English poetry, so they have the potential to seem a bit "foreign."

      At the same time, touches of alliteration (e.g., "dismal dwellings"), internal rhyme ("stairs"/"theirs"), and imperfect or slant rhyme ("years"/"hear," "years"/"theirs") suggest some effort to organize the poem's language—perhaps reflecting the way "you" have tried to master a foreign tongue. The stanza pattern and roughly even line lengths add some consistency to the free verse, perhaps hinting that "you" aren't truly free in this setting.

    • Lines 6-10

      Then you are ...
      ... word for this.

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    • Lines 11-15

      You use the ...
      ... before your eyes.

    • Lines 16-20

      And in the ...
      ... Imagine that.

  • “Foreign” Symbols

    • Symbol Redness/Blood

      Redness/Blood

      Lines 12-13 describe a "hate name" for foreigners that has been "sprayed in red"—"Red like blood"—on a wall. This blood-red paint symbolizes the threat of violence. The implication is that xenophobia has been brewing in this country and may soon erupt into violence (if it hasn't already). In fact, the following lines, which envision "this place [...] coming to bits," suggest that hatred of foreigners might plunge this whole society into bloody turmoil.

      Where this symbol appears in the poem:
      • Lines 11-13: “Imagine one night / You saw a name for yourself sprayed in red / against a brick wall. A hate name. Red like blood.”
  • “Foreign” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      The poem uses alliteration to accentuate important phrases and add a little musicality to its free verse.

      For example, heavy /d/ sounds accentuate "dismal dwellings" in line 2, drawing extra attention to "your" (the foreigner's) impoverished circumstances. The /s/ and /b/ alliteration in lines 14-15 ("snowing"/"streets"; "bits before") heighten the intensity of these key lines, which hint that this xenophobic society might be deteriorating into violence. The /b/ words even sound a bit jarring or explosive.

      More subtly, the /t/ sounds in lines 16-17 ("time"/"time"/"translate") underline words that resonate with the poem's themes—especially "translate," since the poem is so much about language and miscommunication.

      As for musicality, there's a lot of it in the second stanza, a nostalgic passage that refers to "singing" and to the language of one's homeland:

      [...] Recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that
      Is the sound of your mother singing to you,
      All that time ago, and now you do not know
      Why your eyes are watering and what’s the word for this.

      Liquid /l/ and /w/ sounds, soft /s/ sounds, and nasal /n/ sounds heighten the lyricism of the language, drawing out the beauty and sadness of this musical memory. Alliteration even helps stress the word "singing" itself!

      Where alliteration appears in the poem:
      • Line 2: “dismal dwellings”
      • Line 7: “letter,” “local”
      • Line 8: “sound,” “singing”
      • Line 9: “now,” “not know”
      • Line 10: “Why,” “watering,” “what’s,” “word”
      • Line 14: “snowing,” “streets”
      • Line 15: “bits before”
      • Line 16: “time,” “time”
      • Line 17: “translate”
    • Assonance

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      Where assonance appears in the poem:
      • Line 4: “stairs”
      • Line 5: “theirs”
      • Line 7: “letter,” “dialect,” “behind”
      • Line 9: “ago,” “know”
      • Line 10: “Why,” “eyes”
      • Line 12: “name,” “sprayed”
      • Line 13: “hate name”
      • Line 19: “mean”
      • Line 20: “only go,” “dream”
    • Caesura

      Where caesura appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “strange, dark”
      • Line 3: “yours. On”
      • Line 4: “stairs. You”
      • Line 6: “home. The”
      • Line 7: “dialect; behind”
      • Line 9: “ago, and”
      • Line 11: “transport. Work. Sleep. Imagine”
      • Line 13: “wall. A,” “name. Red”
      • Line 14: “streets, under”
      • Line 17: “translate. Inarticulate”
      • Line 18: “home, you,” “fruit. Imagine”
      • Lines 19-19: “says, / Me”
      • Lines 20-20: “dream. / Imagine”
    • Enjambment

      Where enjambment appears in the poem:
      • Lines 2-3: “side / and”
      • Lines 3-4: “hear / your”
      • Lines 4-5: “think / in”
      • Lines 6-7: “head / Recites”
      • Lines 7-8: “that / Is”
      • Lines 11-12: “night / You”
      • Lines 12-13: “red / against”
      • Lines 16-17: “coins / in”
      • Lines 18-19: “Imagine / that”
    • Repetition

      Where repetition appears in the poem:
      • Line 1: “Imagine”
      • Line 6: “home”
      • Line 11: “Imagine”
      • Line 12: “name”
      • Line 13: “name”
      • Line 16: “time,” “time”
      • Line 18: “home,” “Imagine”
      • Line 20: “Imagine”
    • Simile

      Where simile appears in the poem:
      • Line 13: “Red like blood.”
      • Lines 14-15: “It is snowing in the streets, under the neon lights, / as if this place were coming to bits before your eyes.”
      • Lines 19-20: “Me not know what these people mean. / It like they only go to bed and dream.”
    • Parataxis

      Where parataxis appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-5
      • Lines 6-9
      • Lines 11-20
  • “Foreign” 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.

    • Dwellings
    • Dialect
    • Hate name
    • Delicatessen
    • Inarticulate
    Dwellings
    • (Location in poem: Line 2: “There are some dismal dwellings on the east side”)

      Homes or residences.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Foreign”

    • Form

      The poem consists of four cinquains, a.k.a. five-line stanzas. These stanzas don't follow any particular meter or rhyme scheme; in other words, the poem is written in free verse, though it contains a few imperfect and slant rhymes (such as "years"/"hear" and "years"/"theirs" in the first stanza).

      The poet might have chosen this form for a number of reasons. Poems arranged in cinquains are relatively rare in English poetry, at least compared to poems made of couplets, tercets, quatrains, etc. In that way, the poem's form gives it a slightly "foreign" quality, while still suggesting an attempt to bring the language into some kind of order. (Perhaps this attempt reflects the "foreign[er's]" effort to master their adopted country's language.)

      Smoothly metrical, formally intricate verse wouldn't really feel true to this poem's scenario, which involves disorientation and struggles to communicate. But verse that was completely free, with no clear organization, wouldn't quite feel right, either. After all, the poem's "you" is constrained by their daily routine and their adopted country's prejudices. The consistent stanza length, fairly even line length, and occasional near-rhymes offer some sense of these constraining forces.

      Interestingly, "Foreign" is 20 lines long and 20 is an important number in the poem: it's the number of years the imagined "you" has lived in their adopted country. This might be a coincidence, or it might be another subtle way of reflecting the character's experience in the poem's form.

    • Meter

      "Foreign" is a free verse poem, so it doesn't follow a meter. A smooth, steady rhythm would most likely have been a poor fit for this poem, which explores misunderstanding, violent communication (hate speech), and the difficulty of learning a language that's not "your" own.

      However, wild, free-flowing lines would have been a strange choice, too, because "your" life is so governed by routine. (The poem's "you" has lived in the same place for decades.) Though the poem's lines aren't metrical, they are of roughly even length and grouped into orderly stanzas, suggesting that this "you" isn't entirely free.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      As a free verse poem, "Foreign" doesn't have a rhyme scheme. However, it does throw in occasional slant or imperfect end rhymes: for example, in the first stanza, "years" (line 1) forms an imperfect rhyme with "hear" (line 3), as well as a slant rhyme with "theirs" (line 5). Also, "theirs" forms an internal rhyme with "stairs" in line 4, which ends the previous sentence.

      Other examples (some more imperfect than others) include "you"/"know" (lines 8 and 9), "night"/"lights" (lines 11 and 14), "red"/"blood" (lines 12 and 13), and "Inarticulate"/"that" (lines 17 and 20).

      While not enough to qualify "Foreign" as a full-fledged rhyming poem, these hints of rhyme do seem more than coincidental. Perhaps the poem's slippery, elusive approach to rhyme reflects the general slipperiness of language for the "you" of the poem. It's as if the poem's own language can't quite manage to be logical and orderly, but on some level, it's trying.

  • “Foreign” Speaker

    • The speaker of the poem isn't identified by any personal characteristics (name, age, gender, etc.); they may simply be a stand-in for the poet herself.

      They're a voice of quiet urgency, asking readers to envision life as a struggling "foreigner." Or maybe they're not asking so much as telling or urging; they appeal to the reader directly throughout (using second-person pronouns, "you"/"your") and repeat the command "Imagine" four times. In between, the speaker guides "you" through experiences shared by many immigrants: living in meager conditions outside the social mainstream, struggling with a foreign language, etc. In this way, the speaker frames the whole poem as an exercise in imagination and empathy.

      Occasionally, the speaker's voice loses its neutral tone, as when they describe the "dwellings" in line 2 as "dismal." The final command—"Imagine that"—could also be read as dryly ironic, implying that the scenario described in the poem isn't exactly far-fetched.

  • “Foreign” Setting

    • The poem is set in a "strange, dark city" (line 1), where "you"—an immigrant or "foreigner"—have been living for two decades. This city contains "some dismal dwellings on the east side," one of which "is yours" (lines 2-3): a sign that you've struggled to make ends meet in your adopted country. Your neighbors seem to speak the primary language of this country ("You think / in a language of your own and talk in theirs," lines 4-5), so this probably isn't a neighborhood of people with backgrounds similar to yours.

      The poem is careful not to tie the setting to a particular country or era. For example, the details of the urban environment ("public transport," "the neon lights," "the delicatessen") are generic and can be found in cities around the world. (The neon lights suggest that the poem is set in relatively modern times—early 20th century or after—but that doesn't narrow things down much.) The "hate name" sprayed on the wall (lines 12-13) isn't identified, so it could be virtually any slur in any language. The "home" country and "local dialect" in lines 6-7 aren't identified, either, so it's unclear what country "you" are from. In some sense, it doesn't matter: it was home and you miss it.

      These generic details make the experiences described in the poem seem more universal and timeless. "Foreigners" everywhere, the poem suggests, encounter challenges much like these.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Foreign”

      Literary Context

      Carol Ann Duffy is among the most acclaimed and high-profile poets in the contemporary UK. Born in Scotland in 1955, she became the UK's first female poet laureate in 2009 and served in the position for the next 10 years. Like her successor in the role, Simon Armitage, she has gained a popular readership both in her own country and abroad. She is considered a leading literary chronicler of UK life; as poet laureate, she commemorated a number of UK news events in verse, from the unearthing and re-burial of King Richard III's remains ("Richard") to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton ("Rings").

      "Foreign" appears in Duffy's second full-length poetry collection, Selling Manhattan (1987), which also includes the frequently anthologized "Warming Her Pearls." Many of her poems incorporate stories from the social and historical margins and include elements of social criticism. A lesbian writer in an often conservative, male-dominated literary culture, Duffy has blazed trails in her exploration of women's and LGBTQ narratives in contemporary UK poetry.

      "Foreign" reflects her longtime interest in overlooked and sidelined communities. Without tying its scenario to a particular country or categorizing "you" as a particular identity group, the poem evokes the alienation and oppression of many immigrant communities around the world.

      Historical Context

      Though the poem isn't necessarily set in Duffy's native UK, her own country's politics in the previous two decades may have influenced her commentary on xenophobia.

      In 1968, British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell had delivered his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech, which sharply opposed mass immigration, especially from predominantly nonwhite countries that had formerly been colonized by the British Empire. The Immigration Act of 1971 had restricted immigration into the UK, and since 1979, the UK's Prime Minister had been the conservative Margaret Thatcher, who also opposed mass immigration. Notoriously, the year before her election, Thatcher had claimed that “people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.” Directly or indirectly, then, the poem's call to empathize with "Foreign" members of society might have been prompted by fear-driven UK immigration policy.

      That said, "Foreign" goes out of its way to avoid supplying historical context. Rather than placing "you" in a clear historical (or contemporary) setting, the poem sketches a general scenario that arises in many places and periods, including our own.

      This scenario includes xenophobia ("hate") toward immigrant populations, which not only keeps them down economically (confines them largely to "dismal" housing, etc.) but threatens to break out into civil violence ("blood"). Again, the generic setting suggests that this kind of prejudice can arise wherever large, diverse populations gather. At its worst, the poem suggests, it can cause whole societies to collapse into chaos ("com[e] to bits before your eyes"). And, of course, many real-life societies have descended into war and/or genocide due to racial, ethnic, and religious strife.

      In this context, the word "delicatessen" (line 16) is a noteworthy detail, especially because it's a "foreign" loan word in a poem called "Foreign." Delicatessens originated in 18th-century Germany and became closely associated with European and American Jewish communities. Of course, they're not exclusively associated with these communities; they exist in many forms and locations around the world, so the deli in the poem isn't evidence of a particular setting. Still, the word may be meant to subtly invoke the history of 20th-century Germany, European anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust: an extreme example of prejudice causing mass bloodshed.

  • More “Foreign” Resources