Scribd
Upload
90 views

Notes

Shirley Toulsen was a British poet, journalist, and teacher born in 1924 who lived most of her life in Somerset. The poem describes a photograph of the poet's mother from her childhood at the beach holding hands with her two young cousins. Many years later, the poet's mother would laugh while looking at the old photograph. Now, the poet's mother has been dead for nearly as many years as she was alive in the childhood photograph. The poem reflects on the passage of time and how life is fleeting compared to nature.

Uploaded by

Kyra Manchanda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
90 views

Notes

Shirley Toulsen was a British poet, journalist, and teacher born in 1924 who lived most of her life in Somerset. The poem describes a photograph of the poet's mother from her childhood at the beach holding hands with her two young cousins. Many years later, the poet's mother would laugh while looking at the old photograph. Now, the poet's mother has been dead for nearly as many years as she was alive in the childhood photograph. The poem reflects on the passage of time and how life is fleeting compared to nature.

Uploaded by

Kyra Manchanda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 8

A Photograph

Shirley Toulsen • Born …20th May 1924, Henley on


Thames (U.K)
• Lived most of her life in Somerset
• Well known for her poetry
• Worked as a freelance journalist,
educational journalist and editor,
poet and teacher
• A specialist in social history
• Her first collection of stories
entitled ,Shadows in an Orchard
came out in 1960.
• Died…23rd September 2018, at
the age of 94
A Photograph – Shirley Toulson
A Photograph
____________________________
- Shirley Toulson
The cardboard shows me how it was Some twenty — thirty — years later
When the two girl cousins went paddling, She’d laugh at the snapshot.
Each one holding one of my mother’s hands, “See Betty And Dolly,” she’d say, “and look
And she the big girl — some twelve years or how they
so Dressed us for the beach.” The sea holiday
All three stood still to smile through their hair Was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry
At the uncle with the camera. A sweet face, With the laboured ease of loss.
My mother’s, that was before I was born. Wry – ironic; mocking Now she’s been dead
And the sea, which appears to have changed nearly as many years
less, As that girl lived. And of this circumstance
Washed their terribly transient feet There is nothing to say at all.
Its silence silences.
Poetic devices
__________________________
Alliteration – • Oxymoron –
• ‘All three stood still to smile through their • With the laboured ease of loss.
Your text here
hair’
• ‘Washed their terribly transient feet’ • Personification –
• ‘Its silence silences.’ • Its silence silences.

Transferred Epithet –
• Washed their terribly transient feet

Allusion –
• The cardboard shows me how it was
Theme
____________________
• The poem is a tribute to poet’s mother
• The poem describes three stages in the passage of time.

• 1st stage – Mother as a young 12 year old


girl
• 2nd stage – Mother is an adult in her
thirties or forties
• 3rd stage – The poets mother is dead, the
photograph revives a nostalgic feeling in
the poet
• Age and time wait for no one
• Life is ephemeral as compared to nature which is permanent
A Photograph

You might also like