This poem can be compared usefully with the extracts from Search for My Tongue and from Unrelated Incidents, as well as with Half-Caste - all of which look at ideas of race and identity. Where Sujatta Bhatt, Tom Leonard and John Agard find this in language, Moniza Alvi associates it with material things. The poem is written in the first person, and is obviously autobiographical - the speaking voice here is really that of the poet.
Moniza Alvi contrasts the exotic garments and furnishings sent to her by her aunts with what she saw around her in her school, and with the things they asked for in return. Moniza Alvi also shows a paradox, as she admired the presents, but felt they were too exquisite for her, and lacked street credibility. Finally, the presents form a link to an alternative way of life (remote in place and time) which Ms. Alvi does not much approve: her aunts “screened from male visitors” and the “beggars” and “sweeper-girls” in 1950s Lahore.
The bright colours of the salwar kameez suggest the familiar notion of exotic clothes worn by Asian women, but the glass bangle which snaps and draws blood is almost a symbol of how her tradition harms the poet - it is not practical for the active life of a young woman in the west.
In a striking simile the writer suggests that the clothes showed her own lack of beauty: “I could never be as lovely/as those clothes”. The bright colours suggest the clothes are burning: “I was aflame/I couldn't rise up out of its fire”, a powerful metaphor for the discomfort felt by the poet, who “longed/for denim and corduroy”, plainer but comfortable and inconspicuous. Also she notes that where her Pakistani Aunt Jamila can “rise up out of its fire” - that is, “look lovely” in the bright clothes - she (the poet) felt unable to do so, because she was “half-English”. This may be meant literally (she has an English grandmother) or metaphorically, because she is educated in England. This sense of being between two cultures is shown when the “schoolfriend” asks to see Moniza Alvi's “weekend clothes” and is not impressed. The schoolfriend's reaction also suggests that she has little idea of what Moniza - as a young Pakistani woman - is, and is not, allowed to do at weekends, despite living in Britain.
The idea of living in two cultures is seen in the voyage, from Pakistan to England, which the poet made as a child and which she dimly recalls. This is often a symbol of moving from one kind of life to another.
• How well does this poem present the idea of living in (or between) two cultures? Do British Asians suffer from a loss of identity or get the best of both worlds?
• How does the poet use metaphors of clothes and jewellery to explain differences in culture?
• This poem brings together the salwar kameez and Marks & Spencer cardigans - what is the effect of this on the reader? In the 21st century can we say that one of these is any more British than the other?
• How does Moniza Alvi make use of colour and light in the poem?
• How far does our identity come from the things we own - presents and possessions? How far does it come from the way we have to live?
• What does Moniza Alvi think of the way of life she has left behind in Lahore - both that of her relations (well-off but confined to their house and “screened from male visitors”) and that of the poor beggar and sweeper girls?
• How does the poem's last line suggest the idea that Moniza Alvi did not belong in Pakistan?
From Universal Teacher
Monday, 9 February 2009
Imtiaz Dharker: This Room
This is a quite puzzling poem, if we try to find an explicit and exact interpretation - but its general meaning is clear enough: Imtiaz Dharker sees rooms and furniture as possibly limiting or imprisoning one, but when change comes, it as if the room “is breaking out of itself”. She presents this rather literally, with a bizarre or surreal vision of room, bed and chairs breaking out of the house and rising up - the chairs “crashing through clouds”. The crockery, meanwhile, crashes together noisily “in celebration”. And why is no one “looking for the door”? Presumably, because there are now so many different ways of leaving the room, without using the conventional route.
One's sense of self is also confused - we say sometimes that we are all over the place, and Ms. Dharker depicts this literally, as well - she cannot find her feet (a common metaphor for gaining a sense of purpose or certainty) and realizes that her hands are not even in the same room - and have taken on a life of their own, applauding from somewhere else.
We do not know the cause of this joyful explosion, but it seems to be bound up with personal happiness and fulfilment - it might be romantic love, but it could be other things: maternity, a new job, artistic achievement, almost anything that is genuinely and profoundly life-changing.
The central idea in this poem is like that in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar of “a tide...that taken at its flood leads on to greatness” - that is, that opportunities come our way, and we need to recognize them and react in the right way, “when the...furniture of our lives/stirs” and “the improbable arrives”.
The poem works very much like an animated film - the excited “pots and pans” suggest the episode in Disney's Fantasia of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It is a succession of vivid and exuberant images, full of joy and excitement. (Even if one does not enjoy the poem, the reader might like to know what made the poet feel like this - and perhaps give it a try.)
In the poem our homes and possessions symbolize our lives and ambitions in a limiting sense, while change and new opportunities are likened to space, light and “empty air”, where there is an opportunity to move and grow. Like Walcott's Love After Love it is about change and personal growth - but at an earlier point, or perhaps at repeated points in one's life.
• What do you think the poet means by imagining a room breaking out of itself?
• How does the poet suggest ideas of change and opportunity?
• This is a very happy poem - how does Imtiaz Dharker suggest her joy in it?
• Does the poem give us any clues as to why this upheaval is going on, or is the cause unimportant? What do you think might have caused it?
• What is the effect of the images in the poem - of rooms, furniture and crockery bursting into life?
- From Universal Teacher
One's sense of self is also confused - we say sometimes that we are all over the place, and Ms. Dharker depicts this literally, as well - she cannot find her feet (a common metaphor for gaining a sense of purpose or certainty) and realizes that her hands are not even in the same room - and have taken on a life of their own, applauding from somewhere else.
We do not know the cause of this joyful explosion, but it seems to be bound up with personal happiness and fulfilment - it might be romantic love, but it could be other things: maternity, a new job, artistic achievement, almost anything that is genuinely and profoundly life-changing.
The central idea in this poem is like that in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar of “a tide...that taken at its flood leads on to greatness” - that is, that opportunities come our way, and we need to recognize them and react in the right way, “when the...furniture of our lives/stirs” and “the improbable arrives”.
The poem works very much like an animated film - the excited “pots and pans” suggest the episode in Disney's Fantasia of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It is a succession of vivid and exuberant images, full of joy and excitement. (Even if one does not enjoy the poem, the reader might like to know what made the poet feel like this - and perhaps give it a try.)
In the poem our homes and possessions symbolize our lives and ambitions in a limiting sense, while change and new opportunities are likened to space, light and “empty air”, where there is an opportunity to move and grow. Like Walcott's Love After Love it is about change and personal growth - but at an earlier point, or perhaps at repeated points in one's life.
• What do you think the poet means by imagining a room breaking out of itself?
• How does the poet suggest ideas of change and opportunity?
• This is a very happy poem - how does Imtiaz Dharker suggest her joy in it?
• Does the poem give us any clues as to why this upheaval is going on, or is the cause unimportant? What do you think might have caused it?
• What is the effect of the images in the poem - of rooms, furniture and crockery bursting into life?
- From Universal Teacher
Sujata Bhatt: from Search for My Tongue
This poem (or rather extract from a long poem) explores a familiar ambiguity in English - “tongue” refers both to the physical organ we use for speech, and the language we speak with it. (Saying “tongue” for “speech” is an example of metonymy). In the poem Sujata Bhatt writes about the “tongue” in both ways at once. To lose your tongue normally means not knowing what to say, but Ms. Bhatt suggests that one can lose one's tongue in another sense. The speaker in this poem is obviously the poet herself, but she speaks for many who fear they may have lost their ability to speak for themselves and their culture.
She explains this with the image of two tongues - a mother tongue (one's first language) and a second tongue (the language of the place where you live). She argues that you cannot use both together. She suggests, further, that if you live in a place where you must “speak a foreign tongue” then the mother tongue will “rot and die in your mouth”.
As if to demonstrate how this works, Ms. Bhatt rewrites lines 15 and 16 in Gujarati, followed by more Gujarati lines, which are given in English as the final section of the poem. For readers who do not know the Gujarati script, there is also a phonetic transcript using approximate English spelling to indicate the sounds.
The final section of the poem is the writer's dream - in which her mother tongue grows back and “pushes the other tongue aside”. She ends triumphantly asserting that “Everytime I think I've forgotten,/I think I've lost the mother tongue,/it blossoms out of my mouth.”
Clearly this poem is about personal and cultural identity. The familiar metaphor of the tongue is used in a novel way to show that losing one's language (and culture) is like losing part of one's body. The poet's dream may be something she has really dreamt “overnight” but is clearly also a “dream” in the sense of something she wants to happen - in dreams, if not in reality, it is possible for the body to regenerate. For this reason the poem's ending is ambiguous - perhaps it is only in her dream that the poet can find her “mother tongue”. On the other hand, she may be arguing that even when she thinks she has lost it, it can be found again. At the end of the poem there is a striking extended metaphor in which the regenerating tongue is likened to a plant cut back to a stump, which grows and eventually buds, to become the flower which “blossoms out of” the poet's mouth. It is as if her mother tongue is exotic, spectacular or fragrant, as a flower might be.
The poem's form is well suited to its subject. The flower is a metaphor for the tongue, which itself has earlier been used as a (conventional) metaphor, for speech. The poet demonstrates her problem by showing both “mother tongue” (Gujarati) and “foreign tongue” (English), knowing that for most readers these will be the other way around, while some, like her, will understand both.
The poem will speak differently to different generations - for parents, Gujarati may also be the “mother tongue”, while their children, born in the UK, may speak English as their first language. The poem is written both for the page, where we see the (possibly exotic) effect of the Gujarati text and for reading aloud, as we have a guide for speaking the Gujarati lines.
• What is the effect of using Gujarati script and an English transliteration in the poem?
• Does the way you read this depend on whether or not you know Gujarati as well as English?
• Many writers of classic English poetry often quote in Latin, French or other languages - is this a modern equivalent, or is Sujata Bhatt doing something different?
• How does the poem present the argument that our speech and ourselves are intimately connected? Do people not have to search for their own tongue - or authentic voice - even if they have not had to move from one language to another?
• What does the last sentence of the poem mean?
From - Universal Teacher
She explains this with the image of two tongues - a mother tongue (one's first language) and a second tongue (the language of the place where you live). She argues that you cannot use both together. She suggests, further, that if you live in a place where you must “speak a foreign tongue” then the mother tongue will “rot and die in your mouth”.
As if to demonstrate how this works, Ms. Bhatt rewrites lines 15 and 16 in Gujarati, followed by more Gujarati lines, which are given in English as the final section of the poem. For readers who do not know the Gujarati script, there is also a phonetic transcript using approximate English spelling to indicate the sounds.
The final section of the poem is the writer's dream - in which her mother tongue grows back and “pushes the other tongue aside”. She ends triumphantly asserting that “Everytime I think I've forgotten,/I think I've lost the mother tongue,/it blossoms out of my mouth.”
Clearly this poem is about personal and cultural identity. The familiar metaphor of the tongue is used in a novel way to show that losing one's language (and culture) is like losing part of one's body. The poet's dream may be something she has really dreamt “overnight” but is clearly also a “dream” in the sense of something she wants to happen - in dreams, if not in reality, it is possible for the body to regenerate. For this reason the poem's ending is ambiguous - perhaps it is only in her dream that the poet can find her “mother tongue”. On the other hand, she may be arguing that even when she thinks she has lost it, it can be found again. At the end of the poem there is a striking extended metaphor in which the regenerating tongue is likened to a plant cut back to a stump, which grows and eventually buds, to become the flower which “blossoms out of” the poet's mouth. It is as if her mother tongue is exotic, spectacular or fragrant, as a flower might be.
The poem's form is well suited to its subject. The flower is a metaphor for the tongue, which itself has earlier been used as a (conventional) metaphor, for speech. The poet demonstrates her problem by showing both “mother tongue” (Gujarati) and “foreign tongue” (English), knowing that for most readers these will be the other way around, while some, like her, will understand both.
The poem will speak differently to different generations - for parents, Gujarati may also be the “mother tongue”, while their children, born in the UK, may speak English as their first language. The poem is written both for the page, where we see the (possibly exotic) effect of the Gujarati text and for reading aloud, as we have a guide for speaking the Gujarati lines.
• What is the effect of using Gujarati script and an English transliteration in the poem?
• Does the way you read this depend on whether or not you know Gujarati as well as English?
• Many writers of classic English poetry often quote in Latin, French or other languages - is this a modern equivalent, or is Sujata Bhatt doing something different?
• How does the poem present the argument that our speech and ourselves are intimately connected? Do people not have to search for their own tongue - or authentic voice - even if they have not had to move from one language to another?
• What does the last sentence of the poem mean?
From - Universal Teacher
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