About the Poet and the Poem

Shirley Toulson (1924-2014) was a British poet and writer, well known for her books on the British countryside, its ancient paths and its heritage. Her poetry often looks quietly at memory, time and the way the past lives on in ordinary objects.

'A Photograph' is a deeply personal poem in which the poet looks at an old black-and-white snapshot of her mother as a young girl of about twelve, paddling at the seaside with two girl cousins. The single small picture becomes a window onto three separate stretches of time: the mother's own carefree childhood, the middle-aged mother laughing fondly at the picture years later, and the poet's present, in which her mother has been dead for many years. Around that faded card the poem builds a moving meditation on the passing of time, the fragility of human life, and the silence that loss finally leaves behind.