English Lit - War Photographer

• Carol and Duffy


  • Scottish Irish poet born in 1955 in Glasgow, friends with Don McCullen and Philip Jones Griffith two photographers famous for their War Photography
• The poem has a very tight and controlled structure, with four stanzas each made up of six lines and a consistent rhyme scheme</b>
• The tight and controlled structure


  Contrasts with the topic of the poem, as the suffering in war cannot be controlled and neatly ordered
• The unchanging structure


  Shows how the war photographer's efforts are futile, as nothing changes and people just carry on as normal
• Cesura


  The placement of full stops separating 'rural England' from the descriptions of the war zones, reflecting how people can separate themselves from the reality of war
• Internal rhyme


  The rhyme of 'tears' and 'beers' in the final stanza, quickening the pace and representing the speed at which people forget the atrocities of war
• The cyclical structure


  Highlights the futility of the war photographer's job, as he tries to make an impact but people just take a quick glimpse and then forget
• All flesh's grass: 'An intertextual reference to the Bible and a Christina Rosetti poem, highlighting the fragility of life that people ignore like they ignore the war pictures'
• Plosives


  • The quick, gunfire-like sounds of the consonants like 'p' and 'b' in 'Belfast', 'beay', 'pomen' and 'pivs', breaking up the lines and forcing the reader to stop and reflect on the places
• Poem


  • Depicts the experiences of a war photographer
  • Photographer returns home to develop hundreds of photos taken at an unspecified war zone
  • As he develops the photos, the magnitude of the horrors of war begin to dawn on him
  • The chaos and destruction mark a distinct contrast to the safety of his dark room
  • The photographer wrestles with the trauma of what he has seen
  • This heightens his bitterness to those unable to fully empathize with the victims of catastrophic violence in war zones
• The poem ultimately shows that despite the news telling us of the atrocities that happen in war/conflict zones around the world, we can only really understand the suffering if we have seen it ourselves – we are perhaps too unaffected by war and the horrors of it
• Finally alone’
• ‘Spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’
• ‘Home again to ordinary pain, which simple weather can

  dispel’
• ‘Running children in nightmare heat’
• Religious imagery – ‘all flesh is grass’ (biblical allusion), ‘as though this were a church and he were a priest preparing to atone mass’
• ‘The readers eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers’ / ‘he earns his living and they do not care’
• The poem highlights society's typical apathy to the horrors of war


  The photographer is all-consumed with feelings of sorrow and horror at what he has seen but knows these will be met with casual and temporary sympathy
• The poem could be seen to critique our failure to see the enormity of war, but reminds us the photographer's sympathy comes from seeing the war first hand
• There is a futility to documenting these horrors
• The poem shows the lasting impact of war


  When people depart from war, they are often permanently changed (just like the photographer)
• The images can transport him to the horror

  War and its consequences often extend way beyond the battlefield
• The poem serves to emphasise the true suffering of those fighting in war zones, who face all consuming suffering
• There is an ethical issue raised in this poem - is the war photographer's work ethical?
• Is it ethical to profit of the suffering of others, specifically when you consider that they often are met with apathy and do