English Lit - Tissue

• Tissue is widely regarded as the most complex of all of the poems in the power and conflict cluster
• Tissue is an example of impressionistic poetry where everything is filled with symbolic meaning
• Tissue is placed within the power and conflict cluster
• Tissue


  A metaphor for life
• Poet Imtiaz Dharker


  • Poet, artist and filmmaker born in 1954 in Pakistan but brought up in Scotland
  • Describes herself as a Scottish Pakistani Muslim Calvinist adopted by India and by Wales
  • Main themes of her poetry include geographical and cultural displacement, communal conflict and gender
• Tissue is the first poem in the collection The Terrorist at My Table, which is about a world stricken by fundamentalism
• Title 'Tissue'


  Has a double meaning - referring to thin paper and human tissue
• Interpreting Tissue


  1. As a poem about power

  2. As a poem about conflict
• Tissue can be read as a critique of human power

  Highlighting the fragility of man's power and the true power of nature
• Tissue can be compared to Ozymandias


  In terms of the fragility of human power
• Poetic techniques in Tissue

  • Enjambment - sentences continue over line and stanza breaks
  • Free verse - no rhyme or regular rhythm
  • Repetition of the word 'transparent'
• The enjambment and free verse structure


  Undermines the suggested order and control that humans supposedly have
• Capitals and monoliths


  Represent governments and human power structures
• Maps


  Symbolise man's attempt to segregate and control the natural world through borders and divisions
• Receipts


  Represent the power of money and commerce over human lives
• The power of nature


  Is shown to overwhelm and overpower man-made attempts at control, e.g. the sun shining through maps and buildings
• The final line 'turned into your skin' links back to the title's metaphor of human fragility like tissue paper