How does Grace Nichols express her relationship with the two cultures she belong to - South American and British.

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How does Grace Nichols express her relationship with the two cultures she belong to

Grace Nichols was born in a place in South America called Guyana but now she lives in London. Themes and images that keep recurring in her poems are of homesickness, emotions, her split culture, perception of self and nature. Grace Nichols shows this through images of food, senses, landscape, nature and colours.

         In her poems Nichols expresses her relationship with the two cultures through physical issues of travel and journey. The poem that expresses this best is Island Man. Island Man is narrated by a voice that we can assume is Nichols playing a character because it is written in a third person narrative. This poem is written from the point of view of a man. This is an effective technique because it shows us that it is not only Grace Nichols who feels this way but hundreds of people in London feel longing for their homeland and it also reveals the depth of the poets love for her homeland.

        In Island Man the central theme is of longing for home. The poem reveals this message through the use of nature and the sea. These images are representatives of Guyana, with images of artificialness and ugliness which represents London for her. For example in Guyana there are “wild seagulls” and when talking about London she says “wild metallic soar”.

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        The central theme in Like A Beacon is also longing for home, and this can be compared to Island Man because they both have the same theme. The central images in this poem are food and the beacon which can represent many things such as warmth, hope, light at the end of a tunnel revealing that the poet feels warmth towards her homeland and she refers to London as “cold” which shows negativity to where she now lives.

The beginning of each poem could be said to be similar because they both open up to people in London who are ...

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