War Photographer By Carole Satyamurti 1987 War Photographer

War Photographer By Carole Satyamurti, 1987

War Photographer, By Carole Satyamurti, 1987 ‘A PICTURE CAN SPEAK A THOUSAND WORDS’

South Vietnam, 1963

South Vietnam, 1968

China, 1988

Bosnia, 1992

The Sudan, 1993

Syria, 2015

War Photographer, By Carole Satyamurti, 1987 WHILE EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY, IT MAY NOT BE TELLING THE ENTIRE STORY…

Context Ø Satyamurti is a contemporary poet and who doesn't shy away from painful subjects, such as cancer, war and the fragility of human life. Ø This poem was written in 1987, at the time of several major conflicts including: the Iran/Iraq war, the various wars in South Africa (not including the apartheid struggle), the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the Lebanon War, the Sri Lankan civil war and the 2 nd Sudanese civil war. Ø The poem draws on the experience of modern warfare and the arbitrary nature of suffering, not a specific conflict.

War Photographer

IMAGERY: simple alliterative metaphor to suggest how a photograph captures a moment in time and doesn’t tell the whole story. It can reassure you that all is ok. By the end of poem, a much darker TONE is established… foreshadowing Us at home. Ignorant of the world… The reassurance of the frame is flexible – you can think that just outside it people eat, sleep, love normally while I seek out the tragic, the absurd, to make a subject. LANG: effective noun choices – (s)He has to look for the ‘bad’ things as ‘bad’ things sell newspapers!

IMAGERY: metaphor continues. We respond to ‘happy’ pictures and are ‘convinced’ that this must be the truth… Link to LAST STANZA Or if the picture’s such as lifts the heart the firmness of the edges can convince you this is how things are Poet’s message? ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ A moral dilemma is created for the photographer: his pictures can distort the truth so he should stop, but to stop would mean that the images he captures would never be seen by the wider world…

Ladies Day at Royal Ascot – horse-racing / betting / fun IMAGERY: An example to reinforce their previous statement. Pic is nice / happy = this is the truth. A classic ‘feelgood’ pic. – as when at Ascot once I took a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls rolling, rolling silk-crumpled, silk-crumpled on the grass in champagne giggles Suggests WEALTH and IGNORANCE of suffering elsewhere in the world.

IMAGERY: A CONTRASTING example to juxtapose previous image. Pic is grim / distressing = this is the real truth. Reinforced by use of sibilance for effect. – as last week, when I followed a small girl staggering down some devastated street, treet hip thrust out under a baby’s weight. She saw me seeing her; my finger pressed. ss

IMAGERY: This is the terrible reality. ‘first’ first suggests many more will follow… IMAGERY: Alliteration for graphic effect LANG: Creates an horrific image = poor girl’s natural human instinct to survive overtakes her (sisterly? ) duties to her sibling Effective NOUN choice – in ‘real’ world, a baby can be a burden At the corner, the firstbomb of the morning shattered the stones. Instinct prevailing, prevailing she dropped her burden and, mouth too small for her dark scream, scream began to run… STRUCTURE: ellipsis creates a ‘cliff-hanger’ – what has happened to her? IMAGERY/LANG: Use of SENSES. Horrific. Her mouth is ‘too small’ small for the scream that she gives . Effective ADJ: Dark suggestive of a life that has seen too much death and destruction

The picture that is printed changes the actual situation; it’s a simplistic LIE: she looks like she’s smiling! smiling The media – consuming public will be happy and won’t challenge the system. Link to stanza 1. In reality, it’s no ‘triumph’. She had to drop the baby to survive the blast. The picture showed the little mother the almost-smile. Their caption read ‘Even in hell the human spirit triumphs over all. ’ But hell, like heaven, is untidy, its boundaries arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall. LANG: Poet’s voice takes over: reflects on the senseless of war - the random nature of suffering which makes victims of innocent babies. IMAGERY: Often, war affects the innocent. Link back to stanza 1: 'The frame is flexible‘ = we choose to see what we want when in reality it should shake us out of our Western complacency! IMAGERY / STRUCTURE: ambiguous (strange) ending – was this the dropped baby? baby

Structure • Five stanzas of free verse. • The poem sounds like natural speech - no rhyme or rhythm and little figurative language. Rather, the thoughts of a war photographer. • The poem begins in the present tense as the speaker reflects on his/her ‘art’ and its limitations. It then moves to the past as two contrasting photos are described. It concludes in the present, with the poet reflecting on the pity of war.