Tissue & Poppies
Imtiaz Dharker’s ‘Tissue’
Imtiaz Dharker uses paper as an extended metaphor for the fragility of human-made structures — buildings, borders, money, maps, and even identity. The poem argues that everything humans build is ultimately as thin and temporary as tissue paper. Dharker suggests this fragility should be embraced, not feared: if we built the world from paper, it would be “turned into your skin” — human and vulnerable rather than rigid and oppressive.
Dharker references the “Koran” (Qur’an) as “paper thinned by age or touching”. This links the sacred text to the poem’s central argument: even holy scripture is physical, fragile paper that wears thin over time. Nothing humans create — not even religion — is permanent.
“Paper that lets the light / shine through” — The recurring image of light passing through paper suggests transparency and openness. Dharker argues that if structures (governments, borders) were transparent like paper, they would be more human and less oppressive. Light also symbolises truth and understanding — paper that “lets the light shine through” reveals rather than conceals.
“Maps too. The sun shines through / their borderlines, the marks / that rivers make, roads, / railtracks, mountainfolds” — The listing technique collapses natural features (rivers, mountains) together with human constructs (roads, railtracks, borderlines). Dharker suggests that borders are as artificial as the paper they are drawn on — nature does not recognise human boundaries.
“turned into your skin” — The final twist reveals that the ultimate “tissue” is human skin. This shifts the poem from abstract philosophy to something deeply personal. Skin is the most fragile structure of all — and the most important. Dharker suggests that human vulnerability is more valuable than any building, border, or institution.
“might fly our lives like paper kites” — The simile imagines lives as paper kites: light, free, and joyful, but also fragile and at the mercy of the wind. This celebrates impermanence rather than fearing it. The image is playful and optimistic, contrasting with the poem’s earlier references to borders and money.
Structure of ‘Tissue’
The poem uses short, four-line stanzas that are themselves “thin” like tissue paper. The enjambment between stanzas creates a flowing, continuous movement — ideas spill across boundaries, just as the poem argues that human constructs should be more fluid. The final stanza is a single, isolated line (“turned into your skin”), standing alone on the page like a revelation. The form enacts the poem’s content: it is delicate, layered, and ultimately personal.
Jane Weir’s ‘Poppies’
Jane Weir wrote ‘Poppies’ from the perspective of a mother whose son has gone to war. The poem is set three days before Armistice Sunday and moves between the domestic (pinning a poppy to his blazer) and the battlefield (hoping to hear his voice “on the wind”). Weir was commissioned to write the poem for a 2009 anthology exploring the effects of conflict, and she chose to focus on the private grief of a parent rather than the public spectacle of war.
The poem does not specify which war or whether the son is alive or dead. This ambiguity is deliberate — the poem represents the universal experience of a parent losing a child to conflict. The domestic details (smoothing a blazer, making the cat hairs disappear) ground the poem in the everyday, making the grief more tangible.
“I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals, / spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade / of yellow bias binding around your blazer” — The poppy becomes a symbol linking remembrance (red), violence (“spasms”), and disruption. The noun “spasms” is visceral — even the symbol of remembrance carries violence within it.
“Sellotape bandaged around my hand” — The domestic object (Sellotape) is compared to a bandage, linking household activities with the wounds of war. This textile imagery runs throughout the poem, connecting the mother’s domestic world with her son’s experience of conflict.
“On reaching the top of the hill I traced / the inscriptions on the war memorial, / leaned against it like a wishbone” — The mother traces the memorial as a surrogate act of touching her son. “Wishbone” reveals her fragile hope. The physical gesture of leaning makes the scene intensely personal and intimate.
“I listened, hoping to hear / your playground voice catching on the wind” — The final image is devastating. The mother goes to the war memorial and listens for her son’s childhood voice. “Playground voice” juxtaposes innocence with the reality of war. The separation between past (childhood) and present (conflict/death) is unbridgeable.
Comparing Dharker and Weir
Both poems use the fragility of paper/tissue as a central motif. Dharker uses it abstractly — paper represents all human constructs. Weir uses it concretely — the poppy’s “spasms of paper red” represent both remembrance and the fragility of human life. Both poems ultimately argue that human vulnerability is at the heart of everything: Dharker’s poem ends with “skin,” Weir’s with a mother’s love.
Structurally, Dharker uses short, thin stanzas that mirror paper; Weir uses longer, flowing stanzas that mirror the continuous stream of a mother’s memory. Both poets use enjambment to create flowing, uncontainable emotion.