War Photographer

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Created by
Mabli Collyer

Cards (22)

  • Title - “photographer”
    = focus of poem
  • Sibilance - “Spools of suffering set out”
    Creates a sinister tone
  • “dark” “red”
    connotations of evil
  • Imagery of war graves - “Ordered rows”
    Juxtaposes order of photos with the chaos that war brings which is ironic
  • Religious references - “church” “priest”
    He sees his worked as sacred. Thinks it‘s important to bring it to the ‘Western world’
  • Plosives - “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom. Penh”
    Represent the harshness of war OR the sound of gunshots. He’s almost reliving those sounds of war.
  • Bible Reference - “All flesh is grass”
    = life is transitory. Reminder that we all die.
  • Short sentence - “He has a job to do”
    Emotionless - how a war photographer may handle their job
  • “tremble”
    Indicates he has been emotionally affected by something horrifying
  • Caesura of ”.Rural England.”
    Represents the separation he feels now he‘s back in ‘rural England’ and how separated the people there are to the reality of war.
  • “Home again”
    Cyclical nature of his job
  • “Ordinary” “simple”
    simplicity of life - contrasts with the next line
  • ”to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat”
    • Emotive language - “children” = pulls at the heartstrings of the reader
    • Juxtaposes with simplicity if rural England
    • Emphasises with the horror he must have seen while abroad
  • “strangers” “foreign”
    Feeling of otherness - how separate the war photographer must feel at times
  • Imagery of death
    “half-formed ghost”
    “blood stained”
  • Contrast - “hundred” “five or six”
    Highlight how emotionless this process seems to be
  • “pick out”

    simple, emotionless language
  • Mid line rhyme = “tears between the bath and pre lunch beers”
    Shows the speed of forgetting
  • Defeated tone - “impassively” “they do not care”
    Feels as if his efforts are futile.
  • Cyclical structure 

    emphasises how futile his efforts are
  • 4 stanzas of 6 lines
    Represents the control attempted to impose on the chaos of war
  • Rhyme scheme
    abbcdd