When I was taking English at GCSE level we read a poem that totally changed the way I though about poetry and really opened the medium up to me as an interesting forum for thoughts and artistic productivity. However, being the naughty year 11 I was, once the exam period was over, the EdExcel anthology was dutifully filed into some mud choked field or other.
I have been trying to find the poem ever since, without being able to remember the title or author, just knowing that it contained a photograph of a woman, and analytically broke down the image.
I have just found it.
Here it is:
This Is A Photograph Of Me
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and gray flecks
blended with the paper;
then as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
- Margaret Atwood.
I feel particularly bad about not remembering this was a Margaret Atwood poem, as I loved her novel 'The Handmaid's Tale', and I may well have bought it due to this poem...