Tissue

• Who was tissue written by?

  Dharker
• "Paper that let's the light shine through, this is what could alter things"
• "the back of the Koran, where a hard has written in the names and histories, who was born to whom,

  The height and weight, who

  Died where and how, on which sepia date."
• "let the daylight break through capitals and monoliths"
• "raise a structure never meant to last, of paper smoothed and stroked and thinned to be transparent

  Turned into your skin"
• "tissue" - thin paper or human tissue/ skin
• "paper that let's the light shine through, this is what could alter things"

  • Shows the fragility of paper
  • "Alter things" deliberately broad and ambitious but ultimately about the meaning of life
  • Is the poem a hymn to paper? Praising extraordinary qualities
• Dharker presents a theme of interconnectedness through random stanza breaks
• Dharker uses specific and memorable encounters between speaker and paper as inspiration
• "sepia date"

  • Thin and weak but can outlive people

  - comparative transience human life

  - contribution to human knowledge makes paper strong
• "let the daylight break through capitals and monoliths"

  • Light = symbolises power of nature - more powerful than any human creation.
  • Metaphor: shared knowledge and connection
  • Images of paper world- showcases and celebrates the fragility of human civilization.
• "smoothed and stroked and thinned to be transparent, turned into your skin"

  • Erosion of paper over time but also... Human skin ageing
  • Shifts attention to human body

  - human fragility makes life beautiful NOT proud structures.
• Dharker highlights both the power and fragility of human civilization, two traits that the speaker perceives in the marital of paper as well.
• Just as paper symbolises human power that has made humanity the dominant species on the planet- it also stands in for the way this power is never truly permanent
• Dharker explores how paper allows for connections between different points in time and place- and concludes that it's the links between and across generations that really matter