There are fifteen poems in the GCSE Power & Conflict anthology.

For your exam, you will be given one poem in full, printed on the page, and you will be asked to compare this poem to another from the anthology.

All of the GCSE English Literature course is closed-book, meaning that you will need to learn at least three lines from each poem.

It is possible to get top marks for this question by making sure that you know the following:

• What the poem is about

• What the poem means

• The methods the poet uses to convey their message

• The links between the ideas of other poems in the anthology

Synposis

Whatever the question is, it is important that you understand what the poem is about. This will support you in adapting your argument to fit the focus of the question. This section includes:

• A general overview of the poem

• A detailed look at the poem line-by-line

• Analysis of the poem, giving Dharker's intention and message

A General Overview of the Poem

Tissue explores the polysemy of ‘tissue’ at various levels, dwelling on the nature of permanence versus ephemerality. The speaker, an unidentified philosopher, explores various interpretations of ‘tissue’, from different paper forms to human skin, united only by their beautiful fragility and sensitivity. The poem depicts the virtue of both vulnerability and impermanence in the world around us.

Line-by-Line

Paper that lets the light

shine through, this

is what could alter things.

Paper thinned by age or touching, 

The poem opens with a direct clarification of the ambiguous title, “Tissue”, stating that “Paper” is the focus, at least initially. Paper, of course a metaphor, is immediately heralded as the thing that “could alter things”, due to its capacity to “let[...] the light / shine through” – because it is receptive and transparent, apparently virtuous characteristics.

This poem’s immediate commitment to a wandering, prose-like form is carried by the lack of end-stopped, initially-capitalised lines, and by enjambement. The next sentence commencing within the first stanza is evidence of a wilful rejection of neatly separated, discrete ideas. All tissue, we already get a sense, is one. The somewhat disconcerting nature of something “thinn[ing] by age” is cast in a positive light by its inclusion in this stanza, that affirms that thinness of tissues associates them with enlightenment.

the kind you find in well-used books,

the back of the Koran, where a hand

has written in the names and histories,

who was born to whom, 

the height and weight, who

died where and how, on which sepia date,

pages smoothed and stroked and turned

transparent with attention. 

In the second and third stanzas, we see an artificially extended sentence containing a litany of subtle manual attentions put upon pages of paper tissues. The pages have been “well-used”, “written” in, “smoothed and stroked”. It is in doing so, “with attention”, that the pages have “turned / transparent”. Indeed, it is in doing so that the capacity of these paper-based tissues to become open to enlightenment (as the first stanza asserts) occurs. In essence, paying attention to the tissues brings them new life and potential.

The nature of the “attention” is also note-worthy, here. These attentions have been applied to “well-used books” such as the Koran, and the writing is of “names and histories”, births, “height and weight”, deaths, and more – all of which give an impression that the “hand” that pays attention also crafts the pages into something new. In essence, interaction with tissues breathes life into them from outside.  

If buildings were paper, I might

feel their drift, see how easily

they fall away on a sigh, a shift

in the direction of the wind. 

The next stanza is a somewhat abrupt and isolated thought at this point in the poem, about how solid forms like buildings are somehow inferior to paper forms. It begins with the dreamy conditional, “If buildings were paper”, before noting that buildings that did so would be more attuned to the world around them (“feel their drift [...] a shift / in the direction of the wind”). It is not noted how buildings that were paper-based would fail at their purpose as buildings, however. In the speaker’s mind, it is clear, solid forms are inherently stubborn and problematic – perhaps a metaphor for inflexible attitudes more than a comment on architecture!

Maps too. The sun shines through

their borderlines, the marks

that rivers make, roads,

railtracks, mountainfolds,

Fine slips from grocery shops

that say how much was sold

and what was paid by credit card

might fly our lives like paper kites. 

The next two stanzas reflect on two more paper tissue forms: maps and receipts. Fairly prosaic and practical items, the focuses of these two stanzas nevertheless take on new life under the speaker’s loving attention. Careful attention is paid, using both syndetic and asyndetic listing to be comprehensive, to the details generated by the cartographers and shopkeepers: “borderlines”, “marks”, “roads, / railtracks, mountainfolds”, “how much”, “what was paid”, and how. This is a more explicit exploration of the human “attention” from the third stanza.

The “fine[ness]” and ability to let “sun shine[...] through” is foregrounded once more, elevating the capacity of these paper forms to things that may “fly our lives”.

An architect could use all this,

place layer over layer, luminous

script over numbers over line,

and never wish to build again with brick 

Architecture makes its second appearance. This time, the juxtaposition of solid form and delicate form is explored more clearly. In the speaker’s view, not only poets but architects could see the value in building with more delicate, layered, and meaning-containing tissues, and thereupon “never wish to build again with brick”. A construction built from “layer over layer”, of “luminous / script over numbers over line”, is inherently a more magnificent creation. The contrast between the “layer[s]” (and the repeated preposition “over”) and the “luminous” nature of the “script” and “numbers” recorded on the page is striking. Due to the fineness of the tissues, nothing is lost in the layering.

or block, but let the daylight break

through capitals and monoliths,

through the shapes that pride can make,

find a way to trace a grand design

with living tissue, raise a structure

never meant to last,

of paper smoothed and stroked

and thinned to be transparent,

turned into your skin. 

The poem closes with an extraordinary culmination of ideas. The aforementioned “architect” from the seventh stanza is, as promised, no longer working with “brick / or block” but instead with human “human tissue”, that is “your skin”. The extended metaphor of architecture is rendered clearer; one builds a human form out of manifold paper tissues, not out of solid forms, for this is what allows enlightenment (“daylight”) to “break / through”. The same verbs from previous stanzas, “smoothed and stroked / and thinned” are recalled, to tie the poem together, and reveal the poem’s final message.

The poem’s final message is that it is through interaction (“attention”) and an openness to being flexible (“a shift / in the direction of the wind”) that we become enlightened and whole (“let[ing] the light / shine through”). In essence, the more like paper tissue we allow ourselves to be, the better off we are.

Writer’s Methods

This section aims to support your revision by providing you with concrete and clear examples of methods that Imtiaz Dharker uses. 

Remember: methods support meaning, not the other way round. You will gain more marks focusing your essays on the big ideas of the poems and then supporting these ideas with the methods that the writer uses.

Form

The poem is broken into nine four-line stanzas, and a lone, single-line stanza – giving the poem a distinctly poem-like ‘shape’. However, there is an abundance of enjambement, and no initial capitalisation of lines nor rhymes, giving the poem a prose-like feel. The dearth of caesurae, contrastingly, affords the poem a floating, drifting sense, like the language of dreams. The form matches the 

Structure

The poem is divided into nine stanzas, but few of these divisions serve to structure the poem into units of meaning. Indeed, the first idea, the thesis of the poem (the first three lines) is resolved before the first stanza ends, and the first stanza’s final line drifts into the next two stanzas about attention. The stanza that follows is an isolated first allusion to architecture, before two more isolated stanzas addressing maps and receipts respectively. The final section of the poem is a flowing idea spread between the remaining stanzas. In sum, the structuring into stanzas feels almost incidental to the meaning.

Language

The poem takes the conceit of tissue and explores it through both paper-based imagery and human-based imagery. The semantic field of paper is clear: “pages”, “maps”, “fine slips”, “paper kites”, and “layer”. The semantic field of human tissue is more subtle: “thinned by age”, “living tissue”, and “skin”. It is clear from the coexistence of these fields that the tissues discussed – paper and human – are one and the same.

At MyEdSpace, we use this analogy to discuss context – ketchup, salt and chips.

If you ordered a portion of chips, and asked for salt, you wouldn’t then dump the salt into the corner of your chips and start dipping each individual chip into the salt. 

When you put salt on your chips, you sprinkle it over, sparingly, so as to give a good coverage of salt across the chips as a whole. Context is just like salt on chips. 

Context is not ketchup – because it would be appropriate to squeeze ketchup into the corner of your plate and dip each chip in (and in fact, that is advised).

So when you’re including contextual information in your essays, sprinkle it across the essay, just like you sprinkle salt on your chips.

Let’s link the context to the key ideas and themes of the poem.

Biographical Insight

Imtiaz Dharker wrote this poem for her 2006 collection ‘The Terrorist at my Table’, which addressed many ideas about society and human nature and interconnectedness after the 9/11 bombings, building on her own experience as a woman of multiple identities: born in Pakistan, raised in Glasgow, and later living in Mumbai and London – as well as her professional life as a visual artist.

The World Around Her

The poem is composed in the light of growing globalisation and increased discourse regarding its effect on so-called “global communities”.

Comparison

You are required to write an essay in your exam that is a comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two poems from the Power & Conflict anthology. Therefore, it is very important to revise the poems in pairs and to enter the exam with an idea of what poem you will choose to compare once you know what the named poem is.

Tissue and Ozymandias

Both poems depict the fragility of human forms when contrasted with more solid, permanent materials. Both poems depict the permanence of nature’s sovereignty in the world. However, Tissue focuses on the beauty that comes from transience and fragility, whilst Ozymandias lambasts the ignorance of those who believe their power can outlive any more permanent things.

Similarity:

Both poems depict humanity as a weak and temporary unit.

Evidence and Analysis 

Dharker’s poem depicts humanity’s ephemerality as a fundamental. The speaker refers to the “thinn[ing]” effects of “age[ing]” on “your skin”, whilst asserting that such a “grand design” as humankind is “never meant to last”. The universality of such an affirmation – with the adverbial “never” and the value judgement in the verb “meant to” – makes it clear that such transience is natural and appropriate for humankind.

Shelley’s poem depicts human ephemerality as similarly inevitable. The speaker observes that the statue of Ozymandias is all that “remains” of him, due to the effects of “decay” as applied to things in an “antique land”, rendering it a “Wreck” in contrast with his living “passions”. The semantic field of decomposition implies that it is nature’s insurmountable and omnipotent will that has brought about the human ruin. 

Difference:

The poets present different opinions regarding how we should feel about the temporary nature of human existence and influence.

Evidence and Analysis

Imtiaz Dharker’s speaker sees this transience as beauty.

Her poem gives an insight into how allowing vulnerability and accepting fragility bring enlightenment about. It is only through “thinn[ing] by age” that we “let[...] the light / shine through”, allowing us to “alter things”, i.e. become enlightened. Thus, we may “trace a grand design” and become human: “turn[...] into your skin”. Dharker’s imagery is relentlessly positive when describing the ageing process and associated fragility, indicating it as the path to true fulfilment.

Contrastingly, in Shelley’s poem, transience is a source of shame and object of ridicule.

In his poem, the speaker (or perhaps the poet) finds Ozymandias’ lack of permanence amusing. Ozymandias insists that all who “Look on [his] Works” ought to “despair”, for he is “King of Kings”, whilst in the same breath drawing attention to his lack of lasting influence: “Nothing beside remains” meaning word of his existence only arrives via a “traveller from an antique land”. The stark contrast between Ozymandias’ expectations of posterity (and immortality) and the reality of his having been forgotten are seen as absurd.