In his darkroom he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. The only light is red and softly glows, as though this were a church.

In his darkroom he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

 Something is happening. A stranger’s

features

faintly start to twist before his eyes

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man’s wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care.

Point Evidence Explain/Analyse

HE IS COMMITED TO HIS JOB

“He has a job to do.”

The short sentence creates the effect that it’s a simple fact and there is no other option. (Continue…)

HE IS RESPECTFUL OF HIS SUBJECT

HE IS HAUNTED BY HIS MEMORIES

HE RESPECTS THE MEMORIES OF THE DEAD

HE EXPERIENCES A DELAYED REACTION TO THE TRAUMA OF WHAT

HE HAS SEEN

Point Evidence Explain/Analyse

WE LIVE IN A VASTLY DIFFERENT WORLD TO THAT OF PEOPLE LIVING IN WAR ZONES

WE HAVE ONLY A PASSING INTEREST

WE ARE TOO CAUGHT UP IN THE COMFORT OF OUR OWN LIVES

OUR CONCERN IS FLEETING AND INSINCERE

 INTERMEDIATE 2 (2009)

Choose a poem which has as one of its central concerns a personal, social or religious issue. Show how the content and poetic techniques used increase your understanding of the issue.

A war photographer has returned from his latest job to his quiet home in England.

He develops the spools of film he took in the front line.

As the pictures appear, he remembers the horror of the situations he was in.

He sends them off to the Sunday newspaper for which he works, and the editor chooses the ones he wants to print.

As he goes on his next job, he knows that his pictures may not do any lasting good because people who see them in newspapers do not care.

Written in the present tense, as if it is happening now, to make the events more real and more shocking.

The poem is written in a plain, matter-of-fact style, with no complex vocabulary.

There are many stark statements - He has a job to do... Something is happening... they do not care.

In stanza one, alone is alone at the end of a line, to illustrate the photographer's isolation in his darkroom.

In stanza two, eyes rhymes with cries, so we can see what the photographer sees and hear what he hears.