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“Dusting the Phone” Introduction
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"Dusting the Phone" was written by contemporary Scottish poet Jackie Kay and appears in her 1993 collection Other Lovers. As the poem's speaker waits by the phone, desperate to hear from a lover, they can't help but imagine "the worst." The speaker fantasizes nervously about their future with their beloved, alternating between visions of catastrophe and marriage, and dotes on the phone as though it were a distinguished guest. With humor and choppy, anxious language, the poem playfully captures the doubt and uncertainty of new love.
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“Dusting the Phone” Summary
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The speaker keeps thinking about all the ways things might go wrong. The speaker admits this is a bad habit; surely, they'd be better off focusing on all the wonderful parts of being in love.
Yet if the phone rings, the speaker assumes it's bad news. Its ring sounds to the speaker like sirens wailing. And if the phone doesn't ring, the speaker assumes that's also bad news (and the speaker still thinks of the sound of sirens). If the phone were indeed not to ring, the speaker wonders who, then, would call them to explain the bad news. It's a mystery.
The speaker uses a series of metaphors as they imagine what a future with their lover might involve: they envision a hand wearing a long glove, an empty glass, marriage and a busy house, or maybe one night each week spent in a stranger's bed.
The speaker's lover tells them not to think about the future or talk about love, but the speaker can't help but do so. The speaker practically attacks the mailman in their eagerness to find out if their lover has sent them a letter. They hope their lover will send them flowers. They constantly replay memories in their mind of time spent with their lover.
Right now, the speaker sits by the phone, waiting for their lover to call. They treat the phone like a distinguished guest, polishing it and dressing up to impress it. The speaker will give it more if it will just ring with their lover's call.
But, frustratingly, the speaker only receives prank calls, misdials, or, even worse, calls from people who bore them. Meanwhile, their lover's voice gets lost in the speaker's lonely bed sheets.
The speaker feels stuck. All they want is to be with their lover, all of the time. The speaker feels terrible; all they possess of their lover is a photograph. The speaker curses the lover: "For god's sake, call me, or I'll do something about it." But what could the speaker possibly do about their situation?
They have no idea.
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“Dusting the Phone” Themes
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The Uncertainty and Anxiety of New Love
In Jackie Kay's "Dusting the Phone," a first-person speaker waits nervously by the phone, hoping that their new lover will call them. As the phone doesn't ring—or worse, only rings with unwanted calls from "boring people"—the speaker gets more and more anxious and uncomfortable. The poem suggests that love isn't always the positive experience it's made out to be: because it offers so much possibility for both joy and pain, love can drive people a little crazy, too!
Newly in love, the speaker isn't "going over the best that has been happening" but fretting about it all going wrong while hovering over the phone, waiting for their lover to call. The speaker spends their time "imagining the worst that could happen," suggesting that being in love makes them terribly anxious. Their new love feels so precious to them that they're constantly aware they could lose it.
Whether the phone rings or not, the speaker believes it "herald[s] some disaster." If the phone stays silent, then they might not hear from their lover again; if the phone rings, its bells make the speaker think of sirens signaling a terrible accident. In other words, the speaker's mind focuses solely on what might go wrong with their new relationship, whether that's a tragic death or just a devastating breakup.
Such anxieties, the poem suggests, are all part of the uncertainty of new love, which offers as many opportunities for fear as for hope. This new relationship could turn into just about anything. The speaker fantasizes about having a happy "marriage," and a "full house" (that is, a house full of children). On the flip side, as the speaker's worries suggest, it might all end in "disaster." Love, in other words, is a leap into the great unknown.
Love—and the uncertainty that comes with it—thus makes the speaker feel trapped and frightened, not happy and liberated. Stuck by the phone waiting for their lover to call, they're searching for confirmation that their love is solid and will last—confirmation they just can't have. The phone thus becomes an object of obsession, the speaker dusting and polishing it, as if keeping it happy will somehow make the lover more likely to call with good news. Alas, it only offers torture, sending "hoaxes, wrong numbers [and] calls from boring people." The speaker thus feels suspended in doubt and paranoia.
Worse still, the speaker feels completely powerless over their situation. Frustrated by the mocking phone, they even curse their lover for not getting in contact: "Come on, damn you, ring me. Or else." But the "or else" is an empty threat: as the speaker admits, they "don’t know what" they'd do if their lover didn't call. With dark humor, "Dusting the Phone" thus suggests that new love can be more nervewracking and anxiety-inducing than delightful.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-22
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Dusting the Phone”
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Lines 1-6
I am spending ...
... tell? Nobody knows.The first stanza of "Dusting the Phone" introduces its anxious yet self-aware speaker. This speaker has recently fallen in love—something readers might expect would fill them with warm, fuzzy feelings. But instead of thinking about all the good times they've had so far in this relationship, the speaker spends all their time "imagining the worst that could happen." They catastrophize, concentrating on all the ways this new love could all go wrong.
The speaker knows this isn't healthy. They say that it's "not a good idea" to obsess over worst-case scenarios and that they'd be better off reveling in the warm glow of "being in love." Still, the speaker can't help it. The heart isn't always a rational creature, the poem implies, and the early stages of love can be marked as much by pain as joy. The parallel phrasing of "spending my time imagining the worst" and "spending my time going over the best" creates antithesis, evoking the way the speaker swings from one emotional extreme to another.
The second tercet then introduces the phone mentioned in the poem's title. Readers can envision the speaker waiting by this phone, willing it to ring. And yet, they fear that, whether the phone rings or not, it spells "disaster."
The speaker has convinced themselves that if their lover calls, it'll certainly be with bad news (the speaker fears their lover will call only to end things, maybe). But if this lover doesn't call, that's also bad news (because it means this lover doesn't want to talk to the speaker). In a moment of dark humor, the speaker then reflects that, if their lover doesn't call, there's also no one around who could call them to "tell" them what's really going on. They'd be stuck in limbo.
The parallelism of lines 4-5 emphasizes how either scenario means the same thing to the speaker in their agitated state:
The phone rings heralding some disaster. Sirens.
Or it doesn't ring which also means disaster. Sirens.The speaker hears "sirens" wailing either way. In the early days of love, these lines imply, everything can feel like a full-on emergency.
The poem's form itself also helps to convey the speaker's uncertainty and anxiety. "Dusting the Phone" is written in free verse, and the lack of any regular meter or rhyme scheme allows its language to feel urgent, intimate, and unpredictable. The multiple caesurae in the second tercet create a halting, plodding rhythm as well. Those firm full stops after "disaster" bring the poem to an abrupt halt, as do the frequent end-stops in this stanza and throughout the poem. The jarring, fragmented rhythm conveys the frantic pounding of the speaker's heart, which seems to stop cold whenever they think about their love being unrequited.
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Lines 7-9
The future is ...
... sheets. Forget tomorrow,
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Lines 10-12
You say, don't ...
... together, re-read them. -
Lines 13-15
This very second ...
... for your call. -
Lines 16-18
Infuriatingly, it sends ...
... lonely cotton sheets. -
Lines 19-22
I am trapped ...
... don't know what.
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“Dusting the Phone” Symbols
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Lonely Cotton Sheets
Bedsheets normally represent comfort and intimacy—two things the speaker would love to have in their romantic life! The speaker wants their absent lover to come over and share these bed sheets with them.
Of course, the speaker has no such luck, and those cotton sheets instead symbolize the speaker's romantic isolation. They demonstrate the speaker's loneliness, reminding them that their lover is not in their bed. Those sheets cover an empty space in which the lover's voice—or the speaker's memory of that voice—echoes and then fades away.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 17-18: “Your voice / disappears into my lonely cotton sheets.”
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“Dusting the Phone” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Caesura
Caesura plays a major role in "Dusting the Phone." The speaker is hardly cool and collected, and neither is the poem's language. The speaker jumps from one worried, obsessive thought to another, and the poem's fragmented sentences help to convey their anxiety and unrest.
Take a look at stanza 2, for example, where the speaker bounces between disparate images as they imagine the future:
The future is a long gloved hand. An empty cup.
A marriage. A full house. One night per week
in stranger's white sheets. Forget tomorrow,This stanza is also marked by asyndeton, the lack of any conjunctions between these images making them feel even more fragmented and disjointed.
Note, too, that most of the caesurae in the poem are full stops. All these periods, combined with the poem's frequent use of firmly end-stopped lines, prevent the poem from ever gaining a fluid rhythm or momentum. The poem's form thus evokes the speaker's sense of stagnation: the speaker is stuck, unable to do anything but obsess about hearing from their lover.
This is particularly clear in the last tercet:
I am trapped in it. I can't move. I want you.
All the time. This is awful—only a photo.
Come on, damn you, ring me. Or else. What?These caesurae have a claustrophobic effect, trapping the poem's words into small spaces. The frequent caesurae thus help to create the sense that the speaker is "trapped," unable to escape from their obsessive thoughts and desires. They can't move forward until they hear from their beloved.
Where caesura appears in the poem:- Line 2: “idea, and,” “love, I”
- Line 4: “disaster. Sirens.”
- Line 5: “disaster. Sirens.”
- Line 6: “tell? Nobody”
- Line 7: “hand. An”
- Line 8: “marriage. A,” “house. One”
- Line 9: “sheets. Forget”
- Line 10: “say, don't,” “love. I,” “try. It”
- Line 11: “letter. I”
- Line 12: “together, re-read”
- Line 14: “service. I,” “it. I”
- Line 16: “Infuriatingly, it,” “hoaxes, wrong”
- Line 17: “worse, calls,” “people. Your”
- Line 19: “it. I,” “move. I”
- Line 20: “time. This,” “awful—only”
- Line 21: “on, damn you, ring,” “me. Or else. What?”
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Hyperbole
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Repetition
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Apostrophe
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Metaphor
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“Dusting the Phone” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Heralding
- Sirens
- Silver Service
- Waiting
- Hoaxes
Heralding-
(Location in poem: Line 4: “The phone rings heralding some disaster.”)
Signalling/announcing.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Dusting the Phone”
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Form
"Dusting the Phone" is made up of six tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a single line on its own at the end.
It subtly echoes a villanelle: an intensely repetitive poetic form consisting of five tercets and a concluding quatrain, plus two refrains that repeat throughout the poem.While "Dusting the Phone" poem doesn't follow the strict rhyme scheme of a villanelle nor use any refrains, it's still an extremely repetitive poem. The use of parallelism, anaphora, and blunt phrasing make the poem feel circular and even claustrophobic. The speaker obsesses over the same things again and again and essentially ends the poem where they began: waiting for their lover to call.
Note, too, that setting the poem's final line on its own, separate from the prior tercet, emphasizes the hollowness of the speaker's threat to take action against their lover for not calling. Really, there's nothing the speaker can do in this situation. In placing the sentence "I don't know what" on its own, isolated line, the poem closes on a note of frustrated, lonely defeat.
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Meter
"Dusting the Phone" uses free verse, never settling into a regular meter. Instead of using a steady, predictable rhythm, the poem's language sounds choppy and fragmented. That's thanks to the combination of blunt sentences, frequent end-stopped lines, and plenty of full-stop caesurae.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Dusting the Phone" doesn't follow a rhyme scheme. The lack of rhymes suits the poem's anxious tone, keeping things as unpredictable as the speaker's romantic future.
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“Dusting the Phone” Speaker
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The speaker of "Dusting the Phone" is someone with a terrible case of the lovesick blues. They long to hear from their lover and are glued to the phone in case they call. Instead of thinking about all the good times they've shared with this person, however, the speaker can't help but imagine worst-scare scenarios and envision "disaster." Their desire seems to be driving them a little mad, in fact; they make hyperbolic declarations about "assault[ing] the postman for a letter," being "trapped" by their longing, and wanting their lover "All the time." The intensity of their feelings illustrates the drama and uncertainty of new love, which, here, is an utterly overwhelming—even "awful"—force. The speaker is someone totally at the mercy of their emotions.
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“Dusting the Phone” Setting
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"Dusting the Phone" takes place while the speaker is anxiously awaiting a call from their lover. The speaker is alone, and it seems like they're at home, too (note the mention of bedsheets). They look out for the postman, hoping for letters or flowers. They sit by the phone, desperately willing it to ring, even treating it like a distinguished guest. All in all, the poem creates a claustrophobic atmosphere: the speaker is stuck inside, "trapped" by their desire and unable to "move" until their lover calls.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Dusting the Phone”
Literary Context
Acclaimed poet Jackie Kay was born in 1961 to Scottish and Nigerian parents. She was subsequently adopted and grew up in Glasgow, and she wrote about these experiences in her debut poetry collection, The Adoption Papers (1991). She has published numerous books, won several awards, and served from 2016 to 2021 as the Makar (a.k.a the Poet Laureate of Scotland).
"Dusting the Phone" appears in Kay's second collection, Other Lovers. The book takes a wide-ranging look at love, examining both romantic relationships and family ties using Kay's characteristic humor (which is on bold display in "Dusting the Phone").
Kay describes two main sets of influences on her writing: Scottish poetry and jazz/blues music. As a child, she attended traditional Burns night celebrations (which celebrate the work of Scottish poetry legend Robert Burns and would later visit Edwin Morgan in his nursing home to discuss poetry. Other Lovers includes a sequence about blues singer Bessie Smith, about whom Kay published a biography in 1997. Kay was also in a long-term relationship with Carol Ann Duffy, another major voice in contemporary poetry in the UK. Both poets use humor and surprising imagery to explore themes related to desire, identity, and womanhood.
Historical Context
"Dusting the Phone" was published in 1993, well before most people had cell phones. As such, the speaker is both "trapped" by their obsessive desires and quite literally "trapped" inside by the landline; were they to leave their house, they might miss their lover's call!
This was also a time before people had internet access in their homes. Without email, the speaker must rely on the "postman" for letters. There's no social media for them to stalk, either. They have "only a photo" by which to remember their lover.
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More “Dusting the Phone” Resources
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External Resources
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About Jackie Kay — Learn more about Kay's life and listen to the poet read some of her work aloud.
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Kay as Scotland's Makar — Read an interview in which Kay discusses what it means to serve as Scotland's Makar (Poet Laureate).
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Jackie Kay Out Loud — Watch Kay a video of Kay reading six of her poems.
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Kay in Conversation — Check out a conversation between the poet and Nicola Sturgeon, the current First Minister of Scotland.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Jackie Kay
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