Tissue is the poem students find hardest in the anthology, because it is abstract and it drifts. Do not panic about that. Once you see that the whole poem is one big metaphor, paper standing for human power and human fragility at the same time, it stops being confusing and starts being clever.
The key idea is a paradox. Paper is delicate, easily torn, and yet it runs our lives: holy books, maps, money and documents all shape and control us. Dharker plays on that, suggesting the things we treat as solid and permanent, buildings, borders, wealth, are really no stronger than paper, and that maybe we would live better if we admitted it.
This page covers what happens, the airy free-verse form, the language and its extended metaphor, the context of a poet fascinated by borders and belonging, and the quotes to learn. Then comparison poems and common mistakes. Tissue is in copyright, so I quote short lines only and point you to your anthology for the full text.
What happens in Tissue
Tissue does not tell a story. It is a series of linked reflections on paper. Dharker begins with delicate paper, the kind "that lets the light / shine through", like the thin, well-thumbed pages at "the back of the Koran" that record a family's names and dates across generations. Paper, she shows, carries our histories.
She then moves to other kinds of paper that hold power over us: maps, where "The sun shines through / their borderlines", exposing national borders as mere lines on a page, and "fine slips", the receipts and money that "fly our lives like paper kites", controlling us from day to day. Throughout, Dharker imagines this power thinned out, made transparent, so light can break through it. In the final turn she shifts from paper to human skin, "living tissue", suggesting that the most important paper of all is the fragile human body and the life it holds. Because the poem is in copyright, I quote only short lines here. Use your AQA anthology for the whole text.
Form and structure
Airy free verse full of light
The poem is free verse, mostly short unrhymed quatrains with a lot of white space and gentle enjambment. That light, open layout mirrors the delicacy of paper and the light that keeps shining through it. Nothing is heavy or fixed on the page, which suits a poem arguing that solid-seeming things are actually fragile. The form drifts like a sheet of paper on the breeze.
An extended metaphor
The whole poem is built on one sustained metaphor: paper for power, control and fragility. Dharker moves from holy books to maps to money to skin, each a different kind of paper, and lets the meaning accumulate. Because the metaphor runs the length of the poem, you should trace how it develops rather than treating each image in isolation.
The final line that changes everything
For most of the poem paper is an object, out there in the world. The last short stanza turns inward to "your skin", "living tissue", and that shift is the whole point. Human life is reframed as the most precious and most fragile paper of all. Dharker breaks her own pattern at the end so the turn lands, moving from the paper we make to the paper we are.
Language and imagery
Paper that lets the light through
The opening image, paper "that lets the light / shine through", sets the tone for everything. Light becomes Dharker's symbol for openness, truth and life, and paper is valued precisely because it is thin enough to let that light in. She is quietly arguing against solidity and permanence, and for fragility, transparency and connection. The delicate is the good.
Power made transparent
Dharker takes the symbols of human power and thins them out. Maps and their "borderlines" are shown up when "The sun shines through" them, so that borders, things people kill and die over, are revealed as marks on paper that light passes straight through. She imagines power "thinned to be transparent", suggesting the divisions and controls we take so seriously are far flimsier than they feel.
From paper to living tissue
The title is a pun that the ending unlocks. "Tissue" is thin paper and it is also the "living tissue" of the human body. When Dharker turns at the end to "your skin", she fuses the two meanings: the human body is fragile paper, and its very fragility is what makes it precious. Life matters more than any structure we build precisely because it can be torn.
Key quotes from Tissue
“Paper that lets the light shine through”
Where: the opening linesYour quote for the poem's central value: delicacy and openness. Light stands for truth and life, and paper is prized for being thin enough to admit it. Argue that Dharker sets fragility and transparency above solidity from the very first image.
“the back of the Koran”
Where: stanza 2The thin pages of a holy book that record a family's names and dates. Use it to show paper carrying human history and faith across generations, giving the fragile page real weight and meaning.
“If buildings were paper, I might feel their drift”
Where: the middle of the poemDharker imagines solid structures as fragile paper that could "drift" away. Argue that she deliberately unsettles our sense of permanence, suggesting even buildings are no more fixed than a sheet of paper.
“The sun shines through their borderlines”
Where: on mapsBorders are exposed as mere lines on paper that light passes straight through. A powerful political image: the divisions people fight over are flimsy and human-made. Use it for the theme of power being far less solid than it pretends.
“fly our lives like paper kites”
Where: on receipts and moneyEveryday paper, money and receipts, controls and directs our lives like kites on strings. Argue that Dharker shows how thoroughly flimsy paper governs us, while hinting that this control is lighter and more escapable than we assume.
“living tissue”
Where: the final stanzaThe pun that resolves the poem. "Tissue" becomes human skin, the most fragile and precious paper of all. Your key quote for the ending: Dharker values human life above every structure precisely because it can be torn.
Context
Imtiaz Dharker is a poet and artist with Pakistani, British and Indian heritage, and questions of identity, borders and belonging run through much of her work. That background feeds Tissue directly, especially its interest in maps and "borderlines", the human-made divisions that decide where people belong and who is kept out. Dharker looks at those divisions and finds them as thin as paper.
The poem is less about war than about power in a broad sense: the power of religion, money, architecture and national borders to shape and control human life. Dharker's argument is gently radical. She suggests that the structures we treat as solid and permanent are fragile, and that we might live more honestly and freely if we accepted that, valuing light, connection and human life over walls and wealth. For the exam, the useful point is that Tissue reimagines power as delicate rather than mighty, and treats fragile human life as more valuable than anything we build.
Themes in Tissue
The central theme is power and its fragility. Dharker takes the symbols of human power, holy books, maps, money and buildings, and reveals them as thin, breakable and temporary. Closely linked is impermanence: nothing in the poem is truly solid, and Dharker treats that as a truth to accept rather than fear.
The deepest theme is the fragility and value of human life. By ending on "living tissue", the human body, Dharker argues that life matters more than any structure precisely because it can be torn. Notice how the poem inverts our usual thinking: it treats delicacy as strength and permanence as an illusion, which makes it one of the more hopeful and philosophical poems in the anthology.
Poems to compare with Tissue
Ozymandias
The strongest pairing on the impermanence of human power. Shelley builds power out of stone that still crumbles to sand; Dharker builds it out of paper that was fragile from the start. Compare the tone: Ozymandias is cold and ironic about the collapse of power, while Tissue is gentle and almost hopeful, treating fragility as something to embrace rather than mourn.
London
A good pairing on the power of human systems. Blake's institutions feel like an unbreakable trap of "mind-forg'd manacles"; Dharker's systems of money, maps and buildings are imagined as thin and escapable as paper. Compare a vision of power as a closed cage with a vision of it as something light can shine straight through.
Checking Out Me History
Use this for power, control and resistance. Both poems question the structures that shape people's lives, Dharker the paper systems of borders and money, Agard the colonial control of history. Compare how each imagines pushing back, Agard by reclaiming his identity, Dharker by dissolving power into light.
Common mistakes with Tissue
The main mistake is getting lost in the abstraction and analysing images one by one without connecting them. Everything in Tissue is part of a single extended metaphor about paper, power and fragility, so trace how that metaphor develops rather than treating each stanza as separate.
Second, do not miss the title's pun. "Tissue" is thin paper and human skin, and the whole poem builds to that double meaning in the final image. If you never mention "living tissue", you miss the point the poem is driving at.
Third, remember Dharker treats fragility as a good thing, not a tragedy, and keep quotes short. Tissue is in copyright, so quote a line or two for analysis and never reproduce large sections.
Revise Tissue as your poem for power as fragile and impermanent, and pair it first with Ozymandias, its natural partner, or with London for contrasting visions of human power. My Power and Conflict comparison guide shows the pairings that score, and the anthology themes page maps power, impermanence and control across the cluster. When you are ready, work through the rest of the 15 anthology poems.