Themes

A red siren signifies danger — Figure caption,
Disaster and danger are running themes of ‘Dusting the Phone’

A number of unifying ideas or run through the poem. Different readers may attach more or less significance to each of these themes, depending upon how they view the poem.

Theme	Evidence	Analysis
Disasters: ‘The worst that could happen’ is a running theme, as doubts prey on the speaker’s mind.	‘heralding some disaster’, ‘The worst that could happen’, ‘Sirens’, ‘hoaxes’, ‘trapped’	She imagines sirens, and wonders who would tell her if ‘the worst’ had happened to her lover, because ‘Nobody knows’. There’s perhaps a suggestion that the relationship might be secret. In that case, if her lover met with an accident, she wouldn’t know about it. Later in the poem, the mention of ‘hoaxes’ and a feeling of being ‘trapped’ recalls this theme of uncontrollable disasters.
Waiting: throughout the poem, the speaker is waiting for her lover to call.	‘I am spending my time’, 'waiting on the phone', ‘silver service’	The speaker plays with the double meaning of the word ‘wait’ - to stand by in expectation and to serve like a waiter or attendant. She ‘waits’ on the phone by polishing and dusting it, as she ‘waits’ for her lover to call.
Time: Fittingly for a poem about waiting, there are repeated references to time.	‘Spending my time’, ‘the future’, ‘one night per week’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘I go over and over our times together’, ‘this very second’, ‘All the time’	Kay’s narrator is constantly preoccupied with the passing of time, reinforcing the idea that she is obsessively watching the clock as she waits for the phone to ring. She sees different possible futures: ‘a marriage’, but also spending a night each week ‘in a stranger’s white sheets’. This shows how uncertain she is about what might happen - she sees both happy and less happy possibilities.

Theme	Disasters: ‘The worst that could happen’ is a running theme, as doubts prey on the speaker’s mind.
Evidence	‘heralding some disaster’, ‘The worst that could happen’, ‘Sirens’, ‘hoaxes’, ‘trapped’
Analysis	She imagines sirens, and wonders who would tell her if ‘the worst’ had happened to her lover, because ‘Nobody knows’. There’s perhaps a suggestion that the relationship might be secret. In that case, if her lover met with an accident, she wouldn’t know about it. Later in the poem, the mention of ‘hoaxes’ and a feeling of being ‘trapped’ recalls this theme of uncontrollable disasters.

Theme	Waiting: throughout the poem, the speaker is waiting for her lover to call.
Evidence	‘I am spending my time’, 'waiting on the phone', ‘silver service’
Analysis	The speaker plays with the double meaning of the word ‘wait’ - to stand by in expectation and to serve like a waiter or attendant. She ‘waits’ on the phone by polishing and dusting it, as she ‘waits’ for her lover to call.

Theme	Time: Fittingly for a poem about waiting, there are repeated references to time.
Evidence	‘Spending my time’, ‘the future’, ‘one night per week’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘I go over and over our times together’, ‘this very second’, ‘All the time’
Analysis	Kay’s narrator is constantly preoccupied with the passing of time, reinforcing the idea that she is obsessively watching the clock as she waits for the phone to ring. She sees different possible futures: ‘a marriage’, but also spending a night each week ‘in a stranger’s white sheets’. This shows how uncertain she is about what might happen - she sees both happy and less happy possibilities.

Question

In the poem, Jackie Kay uses the term ‘silver service’. What does this contribute to the reader’s understanding of the themes of the poem?

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Dusting the Phone by Jackie Kay - OCRThemes

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