Dusting the Phone — Jackie Kay
Situation and Speaker in “Dusting the Phone”
Jackie Kay’s Dusting the Phone is spoken by someone caught in the anxious early stage of a relationship, waiting for a telephone call from someone she loves. She admits from the very first lines that she is “imagining the worst that could happen” rather than “going over the best that has been happening.” That confession sets the poem’s tone: a mind that cannot settle in the present moment of being loved, and instead spirals into dread.
The poem opens with the speaker confessing she spends her time “imagining the worst that could happen” instead of “going over the best that has been happening.” This contrast between dread and happiness drives the whole poem — every stanza tests whether anxious imagination or genuine love will win.
The Poet: Jackie Kay
Jackie Kay (b. 1961) is a Scottish poet whose work often explores relationships, longing and the vulnerability that comes with loving someone. Dusting the Phone fits that pattern: it takes an ordinary household object, the telephone, and turns it into the entire focus of the speaker’s emotional world, showing how love can take over even the smallest routines of daily life.
Themes: Obsession, Waiting and the Fragility of Love
At the centre of the poem is obsession. The speaker cannot stop monitoring the phone: “heralding some disaster” is how she describes it ringing, while its silence “also means disaster.” Kay repeats the single word “Sirens” at the end of both lines — an epistrophe — so that ringing and silence come to feel equally alarming. Logic has broken down: there is no safe outcome left in the speaker’s mind.
The speaker channels her anxiety into ritual. She calls her care of the telephone “Silver service,” saying “I polish it” and that she will “dress for it,” language usually reserved for a person, not an object. Elsewhere she confesses “I assault the postman for a letter” and that she will “look for flowers” — small, desperate acts that show how completely love has taken over her ordinary routines.
The telephone becomes an object of near-worship. The speaker says she will “polish it” and “dress for it,” treating a household object with the devotion usually kept for a person. This shows how far her longing for contact has displaced her sense of proportion.
Kay writes most of the poem in tercets — seven three-line stanzas in total — each one a small unit of anxious thought before the speaker restlessly moves to the next worry. The consistent shape suggests control, but the sense inside each stanza keeps spilling past its line breaks through enjambment, mirroring her racing, uncontrollable thoughts.
The pattern breaks at the very end. After seven tercets, the poem finishes with a single isolated line: “I don’t know what.” This sudden change of shape enacts the collapse of the speaker’s composure — the tidy structure cannot hold her anxiety any longer, and the poem trails off unresolved, just as her situation remains unresolved.
Key Language and Imagery
Kay’s language is deliberately colloquial. The outburst “Come on, damn you, ring me” sounds like a frustrated remark rather than careful poetry, which makes the speaker’s voice feel raw and immediate. Clipped exclamations and questions throughout — “Sirens,” “only a photo,” “Or else. What?” — create a jagged rhythm that mimics a racing, anxious pulse.
Kay also uses imagery of confinement to show love’s power to trap. She writes “I am trapped in it” and “I want you,” where the ambiguous “it” could mean the waiting, the relationship, or her own obsessive thinking. Near the close, “only a photo” stands in for the real, absent person — a substitute that only sharpens her longing rather than satisfying it.
The exam never asks you to set two anthology poems directly against each other — the printed comparison always pairs your anthology poem with an unseen one. But knowing how “Dusting the Phone” connects to other poems in the cluster helps you choose and prepare a poem for the second part of the poetry question, and sharpens the comparison skills the first part demands.
- “Poem for My Love” (June Jordan) — both poems explore obsession in love, but Jordan’s speaker finds calm devotion while Kay’s finds only anxious dread.
- “The Perseverance” (Raymond Antrobus) — both explore waiting within a relationship, though Antrobus’s patient endurance contrasts with Kay’s restless impatience.
- “Warming Her Pearls” (Carol Ann Duffy) — both speakers channel longing into acts of service and ritual, ending on images of unbearable, unresolved feeling.
- “Looking at Your Hands” (Martin Carter) — useful for exploring how personal relationships in the cluster can sit inside wider social or political pressures.
Using This Poem in the Exam
As the printed poem in the first part of the poetry question, “Dusting the Phone” would most likely appear beside an unseen poem about waiting, anxiety or longing for someone absent; focus your comparison on how each poet controls tone through structure and word choice. As a choice for the second part, its short, colloquial lines are easy to memorise without the text in front of you — keep “imagining the worst that could happen,” “Silver service. I polish it,” and the closing “I don’t know what” ready to quote.