The Right Word

The Right Word

1. Meaning

   • The Right Word is about language and identity: How we see and label other people. How those people may see and label themselves. Dharker, growing up within the two contrasting cultures of Scotland and Pakistan is particularly sensitive to these issues. After 9/11 the image of the 'terrorist' was much talked about: For some people the person was a powerless fighter against oppression. For others, simply a murderer

2. Form and Structure

   • The form of the poem mirrors the intention of the poem. It aims to describe a single event accurately. It is therefore built around a single image (someone standing outside a house) broken into three lines to give it clarity.
   • The poem, however, is structured around a conversation the poet is having with herself. So as the aim of describing the event clearly fails, so the form begins to change. The three-line description remains in the second stanza, is crushed to two lines in the third, returns in stanza four and is again delivered in two lines in the following stanza.
   • The poet stops using words and uses her eyes. She "saw his face". The description now changes. It loses its confusion and is clear and confident. The truth is out – the person is "a child who looks like mine" and the reader's. The poem can then return to its clear, confident three-line form for the final two stanzas.

3. Sound

   • The poem is about language and imagery - and how dangerous and unhelpful it can be. The language is simple and straightforward.
   • This shows the poet's desire to be as simple and truthful as possible. She immediately finds this impossible, however, since every word choice she makes, however small, brings with it a huge weight of political and emotional connotations. Compare the words she uses for the person and what they are doing: Terrorist – freedom-fighter – militant - guerrilla warrior – martyr – child Lurking – taking shelter – waiting – watchful – defying – lost

4. Attitudes, Themes and Ideas

   • When she questions the power of words in lines 11 and 12, she is really questioning her own power as a poet.

5. Comparison

   • At the Border, 1979 – Hardi's poem is also about divisions and how they are created in the mind rather than in the 'real' world. In Dharker's work, the poet is herself caught up in the war of words, and has to find a way through the conflicting points of view around her. In At the Border, we see this world from a child's perspective. So the world of different countries established by the adults is made strange by the child who sees a chain rather than a national border, a single chain of mountains rather than two completely separate countries.
   • Belfast Confetti – Ciaran Carson's work is based on a similar experience as Dharker's poem. It comes from a world where soldiers and civilians are part of everyday life in a city divided by political and religious conflict. Carson also sees the conflict from the point of view as a poet and similarly, the poem dramatises the poet's difficulties in describing or expressing what he sees and feels. Words seem powerless to make sense of the violence. They neither explain anything or offer a way out. At the end of Carson's poem, though, the doubt and the struggle remain.