Ppt about a photograph

1. A Photograph
Written By -
Kathleen Shirley Toulson
Presented By:
Abhiroop Das
Divyansh Pradhan
Shreyansh Pradhan
Swayam Kumar Patra

2. About the Poet :-
Kathleen Shirley Toulson
● Birth :- 20 May 1924
● Education :-
○ Prior's Field School,
○ Pursued English at Birkbeck, University of London.
● Books Written :- Shadows in an Orchard, The
Companion Guide to Devon, The Drovers’ Roads of
Wales,etc.
● Other Contributions:-
○ Gave services in the Auxiliary Territorial Service
during World War 2.
○ Became member of an informal poet group named
‘The Group’.
● Death :- 23 September 2018

3. 1 st stanza(Part -
1 )
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…
● Poet viewing an old
photograph pasted on a
cardboard piece.
● Picture showing three girls
paddling on sea beach.
● Girl in the middle is oldest and
tallest, she was the poet’s
mother.
● Besides the girl, the other two
were her cousins.

4. 1 st stanza (Part-
2 )
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.
● Poet describing way of taking of
photograph.
● Three girls, poet’s mother and
her two cousins, posing
themselves at their uncle with
the camera.
● Windy weather of beach
scattered their hair on the girl’s
faces.

5. 2 nd
stanza
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 laboured ease of loss.
● Poet’s mother viewing at the
photograph even after 2 0 -3 0
years later.
● The two cousins were Dolly and
Betty.
● Both women thinking about
past memories which can’t be
lived again.
● For the poet, the ‘loss’ refers to
the loss of her mother.
● Poet missing her mother’s
laughter and her presence that
will never return to the poet.

6. 3 rd
stanza 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.
● Death of poet’s mother.
● Unexplainable feeling of mother’s
death for the poet.
● Death has silenced poet’s mother
and left poet speechless.

7. Alliteration – it is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the
beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Stood still; Through their; My mother’s; Terribly transient; Silence silences
Oxymoron – a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms
appear in conjunction.
Laboured ease
Transferred Epithet – it is figure of speech that refers to the shifting or
transfer of an epithet from its proper subject to another associated with it.
Transient feet
Personification –It is a figure of speech in which an object is given human
attributes
Silence silences
Repetition – the action of repeating something that has already been said
or written
Silence silences
POETIC DEVICES

8. WORD MEANINGS
Paddling – walking in water
Transient – short-term;
temporary
Snapshot – photograph
Wry – disturbed or irritated

9. ThankY
ou