A Photograph�
By
Shirley Toulson
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
SHIRLEY TOULSON� - The Poet
SHIRLEY TOULSON, was born on 20 May, 1924 in England.
She was a writer and an editor of magazine. She came under the influenced of Celtic Christianity.
Her two notable writing are Celtic alternative in 1987 & Celtic year in 1993.
A Photograph – by Shirley Toulson
The cardboard shows me how it was�When the two girl cousins went paddling�Each one holding one of my mother’s hands,�And she the big girl – some twelve years or so.�All three stood still to smile through their hair�At the uncle with the camera.
A sweet face,�My mother’s, that was before I was born.�And the sea, which appears to have changed less, Washed their terribly transient feet.
Some twenty – thirty – years later�She’d laugh at the snapshot. “See Betty�And Dolly,” She’d say, “and look how they �Dressed us for the beach.” The sea holiday�Was her past, mine is her laughter. Both wry �With the labored ease of loss.� Now she’s been dead nearly as many years�As that girl lived. And of this circumstance�There is nothing to say at all,�Its silence silences.��
Summary
The poet remembers her mother who died about twelve years ago.
There is a photograph taken when her mother had gone for a sea holiday with her cousins and her uncle.
Looking at the photograph, she experiences the great loss of her mother.�
The poet looks at the photograph of her mother, which was taken when her mother was 12 years old.
She had gone for a sea holiday with her cousins Betty and Dolly and while they were paddling, her uncle took a photograph of them.
Each of the cousins was holding the hands of the poet’s mother who was the eldest among them.
All the three of them stood smiling through their hair when the photo was taken. All these happened before the narrator was born. Her mother grew up into an adult.
They all underwent changes while the sea stood still. After about twenty or thirty years the poet’s mother would look at the photograph laughing nostalgically and remembering the past.
She would appreciate the dress worn by her cousins Betty and Dolly.
The sea holiday belonged to the past of her mother and the poet still remembers how her mother would laugh looking at the snap shot.
For the poet both these bring great sadness and an acute sense of loss.
He mother died 12 years ago and now the poet has nothing to say about this circumstance of the photograph.
The silence of the situation silences her in other words, her loss has left her speechless.
The transient nature of human life is contrasted here with the perennial nature of nature’s existence.
TRANSIENT FEET
An example of the figure of speech ‘Synecdoche’ which is: a part of something is used to refer to the whole of something, or vice-versa.
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Poetic Devices
Transferred Epithet
Fill in the blanks �with appropriate words.
Bibliography