War Photographer

• Carol and Duffy


  Poet Laureate, first female and first openly bisexual Poet Laureate
• War photographer was published

  1985
• Carol and Duffy was friends with Don McCullen and Philip Jones Griffiths, famous war photographers
• Carol and Duffy: 'What interested her in writing the poem was the photographer and the difficult decisions he or she might have to make while taking pictures in a war zone'
• Dark room


  Process of developing photographs in the 1980s, with film being developed in a dark room
• The dark room and red light have sinister, evil connotations which contrast with the religious imagery of church and mass
• The spools of suffering set out in ordered rows reminds of war graves, trying to sanitise the chaos of war
• Carol and Duffy: 'The poem is more interested in the photographer and the dilemma of someone who has that as a job, to go to those places and come back with the images'
• Poem structure


  • Four verses, six lines per verse, tight rhyme scheme AB B CD D EF GHH
  • Reflects the war photographer's attempt to impose order on the chaos of war
  • But the unchanging structure also shows the futility of the photographer's efforts as nothing changes
• Tight, controlled structure


  Contrasts with the chaos and horrors of war that the photographer is trying to capture
• The full stops separating "rural England" from the war zone descriptions represent how people can separate what they see from the reality of the situation</b>
• The half rhyme of "tears" and "beers" quickens the pace, representing how quickly people forget the horrors of war
• Cyclical structure, beginning and ending with the photographer going to/from a war zone


  Suggests the futility and predetermined nature of the photographer's job
• "All flesh is grass" is an intertextual reference to the Bible and a Rossetti poem, highlighting the fragility of human life
• The plosive sounds (p, b) in the place names create a sense of gunfire, forcing the reader to pause and consider the reality
• "Half-formed ghost"


  Ambiguous, could represent the fading/forming image, the injured person, or a half-remembered memory
• The ambiguity of "they do not care" refers to the apathy of the public, the wider world, or even the reader
• The poem is about the futility of trying to express the true horrors of war, as people only give it a fleeting look before moving on