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War Photographer

Carol Ann Duffy

In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering 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.

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.

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.

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.


Carol Ann Duffy

From New Selected Poems 1984-2004 (Picador, 2004). Originally published in Standing Female Nude (Anvil, 1985). Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Tags:

jobs news pain photography Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 society SQA Higher texts SQA National 5 texts violence war work

Learning Resources

SQA Key: National 5        Higher
  • This much I know about… Teaching Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “War Photographer”

    York Headteacher John Tomsett's blog post about his experience of teaching Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer" in the classroom.
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Poster

War Photographer

Carol Ann Duffy's poem explores another side of war in poetry. It is one of the National 5 set text poems.
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Carol Ann Duffyb.1955

The first female, Scottish Poet Laureate in the role's 400 year history, Carol Ann Duffy's combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms, has won her a very wide audience of readers and listeners.
More about Carol Ann Duffy

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