Dusting the Phone — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Dusting the Phone
The poems
What you need to know
A lover waiting desperately for a phone call, imagining disasters and fussing over the phone itself.
How Kay presents love as anxiety and longing in an everyday setting, and how its short sentences, imagery and free verse work.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I am spending my time imagining the worst that could happen', 'The phone rings heralding some disaster. Sirens.', 'Or it doesn’t ring which also means disaster', 'The future is a long gloved hand. An empty cup.', 'You say, don’t mention love', 'I assault the postman for a letter', 'Silver service. I polish it. I dress for it.', 'disappears into my lonely cotton sheets', 'I am trapped in it. I can’t move. I want you.', 'Come on, damn you, ring me. Or else. What?'.
Form: free verse in eight three-line stanzas and a last line on its own, mixing long lines with short, broken sentences; the repeated 'Sirens'; the phone treated like the lover; humour that turns to desperation; and the unfinished threat at the end.
Context: Kay, born in Edinburgh in 1961 and adopted as a baby, was Scotland's national poet, the Makar, from 2016 to 2021; the anthology takes the poem from her Darling: New and Selected Poems (2007); a love poem that never says who the lover is.
Compares well with: Sonnet 29 on longing for an absent lover; Cousin Kate on fear of being let down in love; Origin Story on love today.
