Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker: what it is about, its context, and how Dharker uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Paper that lets the light / shine through, this / is what could alter things', 'the back of the Koran', 'Maps too. The sun shines through / their borderlines', 'fly our lives like paper kites', 'smoothed and stroked / and thinned to be transparent', 'turned into your skin'.
Form: free verse in short stanzas, and the final line that stands alone.
Context: Imtiaz Dharker, identity across cultures, and paper as both fragile and powerful.
Comparisons with Ozymandias, London and The Émigrée.
