English Literature KS3 / GCSE: 'The Right Word' by Imtiaz Dharkar (analysis)

Poetry is a very dangerous place. Poetry is never a safe place. And if it's safe, then it's probably not what I'd be interested in. Poetry is on the edge of things. Poetry is pure subversion. It is a way of having a voice about things that you wouldn't dare to speak about otherwise.

Outside the door, lurking in the shadows, is a terrorist. Is that the wrong description? Outside that door, taking shelter in the shadows, is a freedom fighter. The poem wasn't about terrorists. It was about the use of those words. I wanted to think about what words we put onto an image and how we define that image. Because just depending on the words you use, the right word or the wrong word, you can create suspicion or fear or enmity or all kinds of other feelings.

I haven't got this right. Outside, waiting in the shadows, is a hostile militant. A lot of poems start in anger, but they have to become something colder and harder to really work. It may start in the heat of anger, but the anger has to become targeted or the poem can just be a political diatribe or a bit of propaganda or, you know, a rant on the page. There has to be that whole process of making it into something beyond the purely personal or the pure gush of emotion.

Are words no more than waving, wavering flags? Outside your door, watchful in the shadows, is a guerrilla warrior. With all the bombardment of media and language around us, and language very often used crudely, in broad brush strokes, very often poetry has the nuance and the subtlety to bring back the kindness into language, the healing qualities, the nuances. Not just beauty for itself, but the tiny differences that bring a gentleness back into language and into daily life.

God help me. Outside, defying every shadow, stands a martyr. I saw his face. No words can help me now. Just outside that door, lost in shadows, is a child who looks like mine. All of life, you put on personas and masks and different parts of what you are. So there's a definition I gave of myself, which is Scottish Pakistani Calvinist Muslim, adopted by India and by Wales as well. Really what I'm saying is none of us are just one thing. What makes a person?

It may be the songs your grandmother sang you, it may be the food you ate, but every day is also your heritage and culture and you're making it fresh. So that's really what I want to suggest by saying, "I'm all these things, but you are, too." One word for you. Outside my door, his hand too steady, his eyes too hard, is a boy who looks like your son, too.

I started that poem, knowing I was going to take the image and, fairly schematic, I thought, "I'll go through seven different versions of that image." At the end of the poem, when I come to the part where I open the door and say, "Come in and eat with us," the voice becomes completely different. It's not factual, it's not matter of fact. It's a host. And that happens quite often in a poem. The words and the rhythm and the idea itself takes on a life of its own. That's some of the best poems.

I open the door. Come in, I say. Come in and eat with us. The child steps in and carefully, at my door, takes off his shoes.