Language and style

Here, we will address the language and the style of the poem “The Commission” by Roger McGough in order for you to better understand its meaning.

Playing with language

The poet Roger McGough plays with language in his poem, especially in the title. A commission can represent an amount of money received by an employee for a certain service. This is also the case for the photographer, who received money for the after-dinner mints campaign. He also hopes he will receive a considerable amount for the famine relief campaign:

“The photographer is pleased,
He has an idea for the next commission,
The one for famine relief,” (ll. 23-25)

At the same time, “commission” can also mean the act of committing a crime. The photographer does, indeed, commit the crime of overlooking the issue of inequality for the sake of money. He is somehow a hypocrite. He enjoys working for the rich (namely for people publishing his work in glossy magazines) but, at the same time, he also works for the ones in need (namely for a famine relief campaign). His crime is that he works for money and that he does not care about the huge inequality between the rich and the poor.

Tense of the verbs

In “The Commission”, the dominant verbal tense is the present tense. There is only a single verb used in the future tense, in the first stanza: “is to be used” (l. 11). This form indicates a future plan, namely that the photograph is going to be published in a glossy magazine.

The rest of the verbs are written in present tense: “there is” (l. 1),”is” (l. 5...