4️⃣ War Photographer Flashcards
Who wrote it?
Carol Ann Duffy
Who is it based on?
Duffy’s photographer friend: Don McCullin
How many stanzas does the poem have?
4
Spools of suffering
Metaphor
Sibilants disrupts the rhythm of the line
Priest
Evokes a sense of comfort and reassurance
Ordered rows
Red and softly glows
Juxtaposes with spools of suffering in same line
Calming
As though this was a church and he was preparing to intone a Mass
Simile shows the peace he feels. Developing photos is a ritualistic and almost religious process, it’s something he can control amongst the unpredictable wars he goes to
All flesh is grass
A biblical allusion demonstrating how everyone dies, showing that the photographer is trying to accept that everyone dies eventually in an attempt to normalise the deaths he’s seen
He has a job to do.
Short syntax emphasises how much effort it is to act, shift back to reality between England and war zone
Home again to ordinary pain
Oxymoron which normalises pain
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.
Of running children in a nightmare heat
Allusions to places of modern warfare
Napalm attack picture
Half formed ghost
Metaphor shows how he is haunted by the sights that he sees
A hundred agonies
Metaphor highlights suffering
Blood stained into foreign dust
Stain on his memory
Tears …beers
Internal rhyme shows how little people care
