1. War Photographer

2. In his darkroom 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.
For annotation on white board.

3. 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.

4. 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 blood stained into foreign dust.

5. 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.

6. THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S ROLE:
Point
Evidence
Explain/Analyse
HE IS COMMITED TO HIS JOB
“He has a job to do.”
The short sentence creates the effect that it’s a simple fact and there is no other option. (Continue…)
HE IS RESPECTFUL OF HIS SUBJECT
HE IS HAUNTED BY HIS MEMORIES
HE RESPECTS THE MEMORIES OF THE DEAD
HE EXPERIENCES A DELAYED REACTION TO THE TRAUMA OF WHAT HE HAS SEEN

7. OUR SOCIETY’S ATTITUDE TO WAR:
Point
Evidence
Explain/Analyse
WE LIVE IN A VASTLY DIFFERENT WORLD TO THAT OF PEOPLE LIVING IN WAR ZONES
WE HAVE ONLY A PASSING INTEREST
WE ARE TOO CAUGHT UP IN THE COMFORT OF OUR OWN LIVES
OUR CONCERN IS FLEETING AND INSINCERE

8.  INTERMEDIATE 2 (2009)
Choose a poem which has as one of its central concerns a personal, social or religious issue. Show how the content and poetic techniques used increase your understanding of the issue.

10. Subject Matter
A war photographer has returned from his latest job to his quiet home in England.
He develops the spools of film he took in the front line.
As the pictures appear, he remembers the horror of the situations he was in.
He sends them off to the Sunday newspaper for which he works, and the editor chooses the ones he wants to print.
As he goes on his next job, he knows that his pictures may not do any lasting good because people who see them in newspapers do not care.

11. Language
Written in the present tense, as if it is happening now, to make the events more real and more shocking.
The poem is written in a plain, matter-of- fact style, with no complex vocabulary.
There are many stark statements - He has a job to do... Something is happening... they do not care.

12. Sound
In stanza one, alone is alone at the end of a line, to illustrate the photographer's isolation in his darkroom.
In stanza two, eyes rhymes with cries, so we can see what the photographer sees and hear what he hears.