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Imtiaz Dharker · Power and Conflict Anthology
AQA10 questions available at this level
by Imtiaz Dharker
Imtiaz Dharker (b. 1954) is a Pakistani-Scottish poet, artist, and filmmaker. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, she grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, and has also lived in India. Her multicultural background deeply informs her poetry, which frequently explores themes of identity, borders, belonging, and freedom.
Tissue was published in the collection The terrorist at my table (2006). The collection examines ideas of fear, control, and how we construct meaning. In Tissue, Dharker uses the extended metaphor of paper to explore how human beings create structures -- religious texts, maps, border documents, receipts -- that both record and control our lives.
Dharker is interested in the fragility of these structures. Paper is thin, transparent, easily torn -- yet the information written on it (birth certificates, passports, money) wields enormous power. The poem asks whether we might reimagine the world if we acknowledged that all human constructs are as delicate as tissue.
Dharker was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University in 2020 and has won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2014), reflecting her significance in contemporary British literature.
“Paper that lets the light”
The opening line establishes paper as something transparent and illuminating: the light shines through it (line 2). Light symbolises truth, understanding, and clarity. Dharker values what is translucent over what is opaque -- suggesting that openness and fragility are strengths, not weaknesses.
“alter things”
A bold, quiet assertion of paper's transformative power (line 3). The modal verb just before it is deliberately tentative -- Dharker suggests possibility rather than certainty, reflecting her preference for openness over rigid authority.
“If buildings were paper”
A hypothetical reimagining of solid architecture as fragile paper (line 13). The speaker imagines sensing buildings shift, and watching them collapse at a breath or a change in the wind. Dharker challenges the assumed permanence of human constructions, suggesting they are as vulnerable as paper.
“borderlines”
On a map, sunlight passes through political borders (lines 17 to 18). Dharker lists them alongside the marks of rivers, roads, railways and mountains, questioning whether human-imposed divisions are any more permanent than natural features, or than lines on a page.
“paper kites”
Flimsy shop receipts, recording purchases and card payments, could send our lives flying like kites (line 24). The simile shows how everyday documents and money can control us: our lives are carried by forces we do not steer, like kites in the wind.
“living tissue”
The central metaphor of the poem (line 33). An architect sketches a great plan in this living material and builds something not intended to endure. The phrase conflates paper with human skin and flesh, suggesting our identities are as thin and fragile as the documents that define us.
“turned into your skin.”
The final isolated single-line stanza completes the transformation from paper to body. "Your skin" uses direct address to make the theme personal: our identities are constructed, layered, and fragile -- as thin as tissue. The line's structural isolation (a deliberate break from the nine preceding quatrains) enacts the volta from paper to flesh that it describes.
“Paper that lets the light”
Paper functions as a sustained metaphor throughout the entire poem, representing all human structures -- religious texts, borders, buildings, receipts, skin. By filtering everything through this single image, Dharker argues that all human constructs are fundamentally fragile and interconnected.
“lets the light”
Light recurs through the poem: it passes through paper in the opening, sunlight passes through maps (line 17), the architect layers glowing writing (lines 26 to 27) and lets light burst through capital cities and great stones (lines 29 to 30). Light symbolises truth, clarity, and understanding, and Dharker associates transparency with positive transformation: seeing through structures of power is liberating.
“If buildings were paper”
The conditional "if" and the modal verbs of the poem (lines 3, 13, 24 and 25) create a tentative, speculative tone. Rather than demanding change, Dharker imagines alternatives -- reflecting a belief that questioning and possibility are more powerful than rigid certainty.
“borderlines”
Borders symbolise the arbitrary divisions humans impose on the world. By listing borderlines alongside rivers, roads, railways and the folds of mountains (lines 18 to 20), Dharker questions whether political boundaries are any more real or permanent than creases in paper. The listing, like the family records of lines 8 to 10, shows how much of life paper holds.
“paper kites”
Receipts that record what we buy might send our lives flying like kites. The simile makes money and paperwork a force that carries us, as the wind carries a kite: our lives are not always in our control.
“living tissue”
The architect of the final stanzas builds with this living material a structure not intended to endure. The metaphor blurs paper and body: the same fragility that makes paper powerful belongs to people. Words from line 11, the smoothing and stroking, return in line 35 to tie the structure back to the much-handled family pages.
“turned into your skin.”
After nine regular quatrains, the last line stands alone. The break in the pattern forces a pause on the final transformation, and the second person makes it the reader's own: the paper we are made of is our skin.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Both poems explore the impermanence of human power. Ozymandias shows a once-mighty ruler's monument crumbled to nothing; Tissue argues that all human structures are as fragile as paper. However, Shelley focuses on a single historical example of fallen power, while Dharker takes a broader, more philosophical view, suggesting that all constructs -- borders, buildings, identities -- are temporary.
Carol Rumens
Both poets explore identity, borders, and belonging. The Émigrée presents a speaker who clings to an idealised memory of a homeland despite political change; Tissue questions whether borders and national identities are as fixed as they seem. Dharker imagines dismantling borders, while Rumens shows how they persist in memory and emotion.
John Agard
Both poems examine how written records shape identity. Agard protests the way colonial education erased Black Caribbean history from the curriculum; Dharker considers more broadly how paper records (birth certificates, religious texts, maps) construct and control identity. Both poets question who controls the narrative, but Agard is explicitly political and angry, while Dharker is contemplative and philosophical.
“Tissue” by Imtiaz Dharker, from The terrorist at my table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006). Rights held by Bloodaxe Books (bloodaxebooks.com). The poem is paraphrased line by line here, not printed. Short quotations are reproduced under the fair dealing provision of the CDPA 1988 for criticism and review. The full text is printed in your AQA Power and Conflict anthology.