The Complete Guide to War Photographer
A man alone in a red-lit room, developing the worst day of somebody else's life — and a country that will look at it for two minutes on Sunday.
Introduction
- The poem in one breath — What actually happens in these twenty-four lines
- The poet and the men with cameras — Carol Ann Duffy, and why this poem knows so much
The world behind the poem
- Sunday morning, 1985 — The magazine on the kitchen table — and how the war got there
- How a photograph was made — Chemistry, darkness, and why the room matters
Through the poem
- Stanza one: the priest goes in — Solitude, order, red light — and three cities
- Stanza two: the hands give him away — Trauma on delay, and two versions of a field
- Stanza three: the ghost in the tray — One face, and everything the photograph left out
- Stanza four: the arithmetic, and the mirror — A hundred agonies, five or six pages, two minutes of tears
The speaker & voices
- The man with no name — Why the poem never lets him speak
The writer's craft
- Four locked rooms — Form, rhyme and structure — the poem as a darkroom
Interpretations
- Priest, tradesman, or casualty? — Four readings of the same man — and why the poem won't choose
The examination
- Taking it into Section B — Forty minutes, thirty marks, two poems, one argument