Key learning points

1. This poem is part of Dharker’s collection 'Terrorist at My Table' written at a time when her partner was terminally ill.
2. The speaker in this poem uses tissue as an extended metaphor for life.
3. Dharker uses the homonym "tissue" to draw parallels to the fragility of both paper and human life.
4. Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan but moved to Glasgow when she was under a year of age.
5. Dharker turned down the Poet Laureate role in 2019 in order to maintain the personal nature of her work.

Keywords

• Poet Laureate - an honorary position given by the monarch; the poet is tasked with writing poems about state occasions

• Displacement - a situation where people are forced to leave the place they normally live

• Connotations - the ideas and feelings a word evokes in addition to its literal meaning

• Extended metaphor - a version of a metaphor that is developed throughout a piece of writing

• Homonym - a word that is spelled and sounds the same as another but has a different meaning (e.g. bat)

Common misconception