Hello everybody and welcome to this video where I'm going to analyse the Carol Ann Duffy
poem ‘War Photographer’. Now, as always, when we're analysing poetry, we begin by looking
at the poet themselves. There is a risk to just write down lots of things about the poet,
but we really just want to look for details from the poet's life that prove important
in helping us to understand the poem itself.
So Carol Ann Duffy was born in 1955 and is currently the Poet Laureate, which is a very
prestigious role appointed by the Queen to be sort of the nation's photographer. The
first female Poet Laureate and, also, the first openly bisexual Poet Laureate as well.
‘War Photographer’ was published in 1985. Now, in some ways, that makes it quite an
old poem from Carol Ann Duffy who, considering she's still writing today, is very, very popular
today. This is one of her older works – over 30 years old – and that helps us to understand
one of the contextual details about what's going on with the photographs in the poem.
And I'll talk about that in a second. But the method of developing photographs was something
that not many people today, perhaps, would know about.
Carol Ann Duffy was friends with Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths who were two photographers
who were famous for their war photography, their pictures in war zones. In fact, this
picture is one of the pictures – the top picture – from Don McCullin. And these were
two very well-respected photographers who did lots of types of photography but specialised
in war photography.
Now, Carol Ann Duffy was in a program for Channel 4 in 1998, and she said in that program
that 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.
Before we go any further, I'll just explain the bottom picture here, which is a darkroom.
Today, we tend to take photographs in a digital format. That might be on our iPhone or on
an SLR camera, and we’ll plug them into the computer and edit them. But, at the time
that Duffy was writing in the 80s, it was a different process. A process which some
people still use today, but which, I'm sure, many students perhaps won’t understand.
So I'll explain it here.
The idea was that you would take a picture on a roll of film, and, then, you would have
to go into a dark room because, if any of that film was exposed to light, it would ruin
the pictures. And in the pitch black of a dark room, or with this red light as you can
see here, you would actually put the film into this solution which would develop the
picture, and, then, it would gradually appear in front of you as it developed. And that's
a very important process that we need to understand when we're looking at the poem.
So, in the 1998 program Password on channel 4, Carol Ann Duffy said, “Those photographs
are in the background but I'm more interested in the photographer… in the dilemma of someone
who has that as a job… to go to these places and come back with the images.”
Now, that's really important; that Duffy’s saying, ‘Look, it's not about analysing
the specific images in the photographs, but more thinking about the person taking them
and the dilemma of being a war photographer.’
And there's a nice line of metaphor you might want to explore between the war photographer
and the poet; somebody who creates a representation of life as they see it, that everybody else
then looks at and explores. But Carol Ann Duffy is interested in the dilemma that is
faced there.
So, I think the best way to think of the theme of this poem, if we're looking at it on the
AQA exam board in terms of the cluster on power and conflict, is to see the theme as
the impossibility of presenting the true horrors of war or conflict. And that ties in nicely
with Ted Hughes’ ‘Bayonet Charge’. This idea that people try to present the horrors
of war, but it's impossible to do so. Now, in ‘Bayonet Charge’, we might say
that Ted Hughes, among other things, couldn't find the vocabulary to express the true horrors
of war. But in ‘War Photographer’, the photographs expressed the true horror of war,
but the impossibility comes in people refusing to acknowledge or accept, beyond a very superficial
level, the reality of what war is like. So it's a similarity in theme, but a difference
as well, which is really, really important when you're comparing poetry.
So let's begin with a sort of line-by-line translation or verse-by-verse translation
about the literal meaning of what's going on in this poem.
In his dark room he is finally alone with spools of sufferings set out in ordered
rows. The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast, Beirut, Phnom-Penh. All flesh is grass.
Now, what's that verse about? Really, stanza one is saying that the war photographer is
coming home from a trip. He's finally alone. He's in his darkroom to develop his pictures.
And he just talks about the different places that he's been.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can
dispel, to fields which don't explode beneath the
feet of running children in a nightmare heat.
So verse two or stanza two is really saying that he's beginning to develop the pictures,
and he's reminded of the contrast between the war zones he's been to, taking these photographs,
and rural England that he returns to when he comes home.
Now, you'll notice that this poem is filled with rich and vivid visual imagery just like
photographs. And I'm not going to analyse a lot of that in this analysis. I want to
focus more on the structure because I think everybody goes for the language and the images.
And I want to give you something a bit more complex because, in an exam, you want to be
able to write not just about language but about structure as well. Also about form,
but this poem doesn't follow a particular poetic form so there's not really anything
to say about form. But what's lost in form is made up for in structure where there are
lots of things to say.
Verse three: Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes, a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man's wife, how he sought approval without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust. So what's happening in this stanza? A picture
is beginning to develop – remember I said the picture would slowly kind of fade into
view – and it reminds him of the death of the man the photograph was taken of and the
cries of the man's wife. A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care. So, in this final stanza, he's saying the
people in England who look at these war photographs, which are going to end up in the Sunday newspaper,
will be sad for a moment but, then, forget and carry on with their life again. And the
poem ends with the war photographer going back out to a war zone.
So let's talk about structure. Interestingly, this poem has a very tight and controlled
structure. There are four verses. Each verse or stanza has six lines. The rhyme scheme,
as you can see on the left here mapped out, is very similar all the way through ABBCDDEFFGHH…
It goes on and on and on.
And everything is tightly controlled. And this is interesting because there are lots
of ways you can interpret the tight control of the structure in the poem – through the
lines per stanza, through the uniform rhyme scheme. You could say that it reflects the
war photographer’s job, who is trying to impose order on the chaos of war; is trying
to make it palatable so that we can look at it, be temporarily moved, and, then, forget
about it.
You see, suffering in war cannot be controlled and neatly ordered. And there's a real juxtaposition
here – a juxtaposition is putting two opposite things next to each other to exaggerate the
difference – because we've got a very tightly, neatly ordered and controlled structure, but
a theme or a topic of the poem which is the chaos of war.
So, the two contradict each other here, and the contrast is something we see throughout
the poem. It seems that, throughout the whole poem, there's an unending message of what
we see and think about war and the reality of war, which is impossible to understand.
So, we could say the unchanging structure also shows how the war photographer’s efforts
are futile. Nothing changes. He's trying to make us realise the reality of the horrors
of war, but everything just carries on as normal – represented by verse after verse
carrying on like the previous one – and his efforts are futile.
What else is there to say? Well, Rural England is between two full stops. This is a structural
device. It's caesura which is where we are forced to pause or stop – in this case,
from full stops – within the line of poetry. But Rural England is, therefore, separated
completely from the descriptions of the war zones by two full stops. And this is like
how the people in the poem are able to separate what they see from the reality of the situation.
It's all about the fact that we would look at these images of war and be temporarily
moved, but fail to really grasp the true horrors of war, and, then, just carry on with our
life.
This is also represented through the half rhyme in the line ‘with tears between the
bath and pre-lunch beers’. So, if you have a look down in the final verse, there's the
half rhyme, the mid-line rhyme of ‘tears’ and ‘beers’. And that actually quickens
the pace in this final verse. And I think it represents the speed at which people forget.
So, the idea is they look at these pictures and they'll be sad for a second. But isn’t
that true? Isn't that what happens to us? We're overloaded with this sensory imagery,
aren't we? And we're very sad, but, then, we might forget about it.
So the rhyme of ‘tears’ and ‘beers’ – the rhyme within the lines – speeds
up the pace of this line and reflects the speed at which people forget the horrors of
war.
And there is also a cyclical structure in the poem. It begins with the war photographer
coming back from a trip. In his dark room, he is finally alone. And it ends with him
going back out on another trip from the aeroplane. And there's this idea of a cyclical structure
that it ends where it starts again with this journeying to and from a war zone.
And any time a poem has a cyclical structure like this, where it ends where it begins,
it links to the theme of fate – as if everything is predetermined and set; there's no escaping
it; it's just going round in a loop – and the sort of futility of the war photographer’s
job – in that he's trying to make an impact and make people realise the true horrors of
war, but how people are just sort of sanitising it and taking it as a quick two-second glimpse
of sadness and, then, carrying on with their very ordered and structured lives and forgetting
about it – and how that's such a futile endeavor.
So, those are some points to do with structure – the fact that there are four stanzas,
six lines per stanza, very ordered rhyme scheme; and how that reflects the fact that the war
photographer, in some way, orders or tries to impose order on the chaos of war; but how
that’s a juxtaposition because, structurally, this is order, but, thematically, war is chaos,
we cannot order it; and how the unchanging structure, tied in with the way that it begins
and ends in the same way, shows the futility of the war photographer’s job because people
just don't care, as represented by the half rhyme in the final verse which shows how quickly
people forget.
Now, let's have a look at some things to do with language. There's loads of language in
this poem. I'm not going to go through it all because I'm sure this is some of the things
that people will pick up straight away or be covering in class.
Some symbolism in the first verse. So, we've got the ‘dark room’, and we've got the
red light. And both of those have very sinister sort of evil connotations. And that contrasts
greatly with, in the same verse, the religious imagery of church and mass.
And I think this is quite interesting because you could say the religious imagery suggests
that there's a serious solemn role to his work. But there's the contrast between the
evil, sinister imagery of dark room and red light and, then, the religious sort of sanctified
imagery of church and mass. A seeming contradiction.
And contrast and contradiction, as I've just gone through in the structure part of this
video, is really important in this poem. The idea of two things that are opposed; the idea
of trying to make order out of something which is chaotic. And I think the imagery in verse
one backs up that contrast.
Imagery that is quite interesting as well, ‘the spools of suffering set out in ordered
rows’. Well, the ‘ordered rows’ reminds us of war graves. And there's an interesting
thing in war graves where, again, it tries to sanitise it. Everything is very structured
and organized, but, of course, that isn't what war and conflict and real suffering is
like. We try to sanitise it and make it pretty, but it is anything but pretty.
‘All flesh is grass’ is an interesting line. It actually is an intertextual reference
to the Bible. It's found in the Book of Isaiah chapter 40 verse 6. And what is being talked
about in Isaiah is the sort of transitory, fleeting nature of human life. But it's also
the name of a Christina Rossetti poem which is about the same topic. That life comes and
goes in an instant.
And you could say that the poem, in its reference to Isaiah or/and the Christina Rossetti poem,
is just highlighting the fragility of life. And that the fragility of life, through the
Rossetti poem and, then, through the biblical scripture, is something people have been writing
about for thousands of years. Yet, still, somehow, we ignore it like we ignore the war
pictures in this poem. We might think about it for a second, but we don't fully acknowledge
the fragility of life as represented through the intertextual references that are so historic
here. It's almost like this has been going on forever, but we still hide away from it.
What else is there to talk about? Some interesting plosives in line six. Now, a plosive is where
we have a consonant that is produced by stopping the airflow using the lips, teeth, or palate.
So [p] and [b] sounds are two of the plosives, and we’ve got them all here – ‘Belfast.
Beirut. Phnom Penh.’ And these plosives have this kind of quick-fire
pace, a bit like gunfire. So the plosives break the piece of what went before and give
us this quick blast of ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, sort of gunfire.
But, also, there's a structural device here, a caesura. Again, because the full stops break
up the lines. And what we would like to do here is, probably, just read these place names
and move on. But the full-stop forces us to stop and think about Belfast, about Beirut,
about Phnom Penh. And the whole poem, of course, is criticising how we don't stop and think
about the reality of war, the reality of conflict and suffering, so the structure here makes
us stop and think about just that.
Another strong image in the poem is this idea of ‘a half-formed ghost’. And this is
an ambiguous phrase. It can be seen in a lot of ways. You can think that, perhaps, it's
half formed because, as the picture is developing in front of the photographer's eyes, it’s
starting to fade into existence and come into existence and, therefore, it's half formed.
Or ‘half-formed’ could represent how this person was injured in whatever way it was
that he was mutilated. And it could even mean that it's half-formed because it's half a
memory. It's not fully remembered.
Finally, the last line of the poem talks about ‘he earns his living and they do not care’.
And there's an ambiguity here. Who is the ‘they’ who doesn't care? Is it the public
who look at these pictures in the newspapers and quickly forget? Is it actually the wider
world who’s apathetic about others’ suffering? And is it us, as the readers of the poem,
who would read it and, then, quickly move on and forget?
So, in terms of the cluster of poetry – the power and conflict idea – I think the poem
is really about the futility of being able to try and express the reality of conflict.
But, like I said, a lot of the poems are about that. A lot of the poems try to express something
and sort of come to the conclusion “I can't express this”.
So, Ted Hughes tries to express the horrors of war and, in doing so, has to borrow from
Wilfred Owen because he can't, in his own words, express the true horrors of war. Whereas
what we have with Duffy's poem is, actually, there is the ability to express the true horrors
of war, but it's almost just as futile as everything else because people don't fully
engage with it. They give it a fleeting look and, then, move on.
So, I hope you found this video useful, guys. What I've tried to do in this one is not go
through every kind of photographic image in the poem because it's so visually rich, but
just to go through some of the things that, perhaps, most people might not spot. So, I
hope you found it useful.