Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan and Search for my tongue both show people thinking about their 'roots'. How does each poem convey their thoughts and feelings?
Poems from other cultures and traditions. We have been studying two poems from two different cultures, they are 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' and 'Search for my tongue'. Both poems explore and explain the fact of coping with two unlike cultures. We will be looking at how each poet conveys their thoughts and feelings about their culture through their poems. We will also explore the way the poets explore their 'roots'. Our group will also attempt to look at the following points in the poems: the similarities and differences in the poems, the structural and presentational devices used and the poet's use of language. Both poets show through their poems how problematic it can be to be from a different culture and live in a peculiar environment. In Sujata Bhatt's poem, 'Search for my tongue' she explains to the audience what it is like to speak and think in two languages and this leads her to losing her mother tongue whereas in Moniza Alvi's poem, 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan' she shows the audience how having parents from two dissimilar cultures can make life very confusing. But together the poems give a sense of incongruity and a feeling that you don't belong here. The poems also show your original culture is always there, and that it isn't completely lost, for example in 'Search for my tongue' the poet is confident that the mother tongue is still with her and in
Compare how identity is shown to be important in 'Half-caste' and 'In search for my tongue'
Compare how identity is shown to be important in 'Half-caste' and 'In search for my tongue' 'In search for my tongue' is a poem based around the idea of culture and identity. The idea of losing a mother tongue, is like losing a body part; tongue being the metaphor most used along with a blossoming flower, connecting together at the end in union. In this poem John Agard is criticizing the offensiveness and stupidity of the term "half-caste". The poem uses an aggressive manner, and makes the reader responsible even guilty of maybe even using the term 'half-caste'. Identity is important; in "Half-caste" essentially it's using the idea of race as a wide metaphor. So challenging attitudes that are prejudiced towards half castes by ridiculing and questioning this through a poetic structure which both mocks stereotypes of the way foreigners speak as well as questioning whether many things which are mixed are any worse because of it. Essentially it's suggesting a duality to nature and to life, which is prevalent in a great deal of poetry like that of William Blake's. The poet uses phonetic language to express the mans pride for his identity and refuses to back down and conform to the stereotypical (average) person. In some parts of the poem, the poet points out the absurdity of the phrase, that he makes jokes such as "half-a-dream" and "half-a-shadow". He presents absurd ideas to
Poems from Other Cultures and Traditions
Poems from Other Cultures and Traditions Introduction In the Anthology, poets from other cultures and traditions are contrasted with those in the English literary heritage. The writers in this section may live in the UK as members of ethnic minority groups or may live overseas. All the poems in this section are written largely or wholly in English, but in several you will find non-standard varieties of English, while several make use of other languages. One even has text in Gujarati. 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
Not My Business is written by Niyi Osundare a Nigerian man whose first language or mother tongue is English. In my perspective, the basic plot of the poem portrays the struggles of living in a country where the dictating government
Oral English: Cultures - Poem Assessment Selected Poem: Not My Business They picked Akanni up one morning Beat him soft like clay And stuffed him down the belly Of a waiting jeep. What business of mine is it So long they don't take the yam From my savouring mouth? They came one night Booted the whole house awake And dragged Danladi out, Then off to a lengthy absence. What business of mine is it So long they don't take the yam From my savouring mouth? Chinwe went to work one day Only to find her job was gone: No query, no warning, no probe - Just one neat stack for a stainless record What business of mine is it So long they don't take the yam From my savouring mouth? And then one evening As I sat down to eat my yam A knock on the door froze my hungry hand. The Jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn Waiting, waiting in its usual silence. Niyi Osundare Stephen (subject): Not My Business is written by Niyi Osundare a Nigerian man whose first language or mother tongue is English. In my perspective, the basic plot of the poem portrays the struggles of living in a country where the dictating government unfairly persecute those who don't support them. The evidence to support this is the fact that the kidnappers seem to use a jeep, which could be associated with the army, also the poet refers to them as 'they' which makes them seem a large powerful
A Comparison of 'Sonnet 17' by William Shakespeare And 'The Writer' by Sujata Bhatt
Bhavik Patel 1OMS A Comparison of 'Sonnet 17' by William Shakespeare And 'The Writer' by Sujata Bhatt 'Sonnet 17' and 'The Writer' deal with the issues of the difficulties of describing nature and a woman on paper and the frustration of not being able to write. Having reading both titles one would get the impression of 'Sonnet 17' being a love poem, (as a sonnet is a traditional love poem),that it concerns the issues of beauty and time. '17' illustrates the number of the poem, showing the poet has written quite a few sonnet, this being his seventeenth one, all about the same women. This shows his obsession with the woman he is writing about and how much he loves her. From the title 'The Writer', the word 'writer' is normally associated with someone creative and imaginative and it tells the reader the poem will in some way deal with the writing process or something related to writing. Shakespeare is famous for writing poems and plays. He was born sometime in late April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK and he died on his 52nd birthday in 1616. Where as Sujata Bhatt is of Asian origin, which may influence her take on writing. She was born in Ahmedabad, India in 1956. This means the backgrounds of both writers are very different, as Shakespeare lived in the UK and Sujata lived in India. Also the poems were written in very different periods of time. When
Half caste, Unrelated incidents, Search for my tongue
POETRY Half caste, Unrelated incidents, Search for my tongue By Gurdeep Sian I will be discussing how the three poems "Halfe Caste", "Unrelated incidents", and "search for my tongue" do not use standard English. I will be exploring the poets motivation and discussing how the poets deviate from standard English. In the poem "Search for my tongue" the poet Sujata Bhatt uses the language Gujarat. Using an alternative language such as (Gujarat) has an effect in ways that it shows how Sujata Bhatt had went from speaking English to Gujarat and back to English. It has an effect showing how she has two tongues in her mouth, one the English tongue, and the other tongue being the foreign tongue. Sujata's English tongue is talking however overnight her Gujarat tongue has taken over in her dreams. Then in the morning her English tongue comes back like a flower growing, "the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth, it pushes the other tongue aside. In the poem "Unrelated incidents" is a reporter from the BBC talking. From the way the words are spelt we can gather that the reporter is Scottish, "this is thi six a clock thi man said n thi reason a talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk about thi trooth". Also in this poem is hardly any standard English at all. It is effective in ways that we get ideas of what the character is like. We know how the
When making a comparison between the two poems, 'Search For My Tongue' by Sujata Bhatt and 'Ogun' by Edward Kamau Brathwaite we can see that both are primarily concerned with notions of culture and identity and in particular how one impacts
Compare 'Search for my Tongue' with 'Ogun' showing how the poets reveal ideas and feelings about their identity. When making a comparison between the two poems, 'Search For My Tongue' by Sujata Bhatt and 'Ogun' by Edward Kamau Brathwaite we can see that both are primarily concerned with notions of culture and identity and in particular how one impacts upon the other. The implication being, that the culture into which we are born plays an important role in the formation of our identity and that when we attempt to integrate ourselves into a 'foreign' culture conflict is created within. This conflict can threaten our sense of self, causing it to fragment - the result of which is that some part of our self is ultimately lost. Both poets use metaphors in order to demonstrate this point, for example, Bhatt uses the physical tongue as a metaphor for language as she creates the image of two tongues: "....what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth, and lost the first one, the mother tongue," Here, Bhatt suggests that the 'two tongues' or languages and the cultures from which they are derived are incompatible. She feels that the first will be lost or replaced by the second, which she refers to as "the foreign tongue" which you can not really know. This idea that the second tongue is one that 'you could not really know', implies further that language is about more
Compare Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan to Search for my tongue
Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan and Search for My Tongue both show people thinking about their roots. How does each poet convey their thoughts and feelings? In presents from my Aunts in Pakistan and Search for my tongue, the poets make clear to the reader their strong feelings that they have about their roots. The first poem that I am going to talk about is Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan by Moniza Alvi. Moniza Alvi comes from Pakistan and writes a poem in first person and is in autobiographical format. Alvi tells us that she is a mixed race girl who receives gifts from family who live in Pakistan; she describes the gifts of clothes and jewellery sent to her in England by her Pakistani relatives. Moniza Alvi contrasts the exotic clothes and jewellery 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 marvels at how pretty her clothes are from Pakistan by describing them vibrantly with colours such as 'peacock blue' and 'apple-green.' The reader gets the impression that the girl is not comfortable with her home in England but she thinks that she won't be comfortable living in Pakistan either. We know this as she says she has 'no fixed nationality.' We can easily see that she doesn't know where she belongs. The bright colours of the salwar kameez suggest the familiar idea of exotic
Explore the poets search for identity in 'Search For My Tongue', 'Unrelated Incidents', and 'Half-Caste'.
Explore the poets search for identity. The poems I shall be exploring to show the poets search for identity will be; An extract from 'Search For My Tongue' Sujata Bhatt, An extract from 'Unrelated Incidents' Tom Leonard, 'Half-Caste' John Agard. 'Search For My Tongue' Sujata Bhatt. Search for my tongue is a poem about a women who is afraid of losing her native language which is a part if her culture. The poem is expressing her pain and emotions with bold terms. She talks about her language as it were an actual living thing, she says tongue, which is creating an image and it is also a metaphor of the language in her expression. She is distressed/ distraught, being in remorse about losing her tongue, the native language. Her search for identity is expressed through the search of the language, as without her native tongue she feels as if she has no identity which is why she is afraid of losing the language, as if she isn't a complete person without the language. She sends a message of being alienated without her mother tongue, almost like being orphaned to her second tongue because she feels as if she has been rebounded onto it. She uses any metaphors to express her feelings and emotions about getting her mother tongue back; 'it grows back, a stump of a shoot, grows longer, grows moist, grows stronger veins, it ties the other tongue in knots, the bud opens, the bud
'Half-caste' 'search for my tongue' and 'blessing' all show people who are outsiders - How does each poet convey their thoughts and feelings?
'Half-caste' 'search for my tongue' and 'blessing' all show people who are outsiders. How does each poet convey their thoughts and feelings? You should include: The idea and attitudes of the poets The way the poems are set out-the structure The ways each poet uses language What the poets have to say about their feelings. All three poems are about outsiders and issues that they find important. Issues that most of us would take for granted if we were not actually in that particular group. The first poem 'half-caste' by John Agard addresses the issue of being half-caste. The poet ridicules the use of the term half-caste. The poet does this in a very light-hearted and fun way. He asks if Picasso is second rate just because he mixed colours in his paintings and he asks if the English weather is classed as "half-caste weather" because it's always overcast in England. Should Tchaikovsky's work or music be classed as second rate just because he used both the black and white notes on his piano. The point he is trying to make to the reader is - is someone who is called a half-caste only half a person? The point of the poem is to try and get the reader to be a bit more open-minded. He deliberately uses very well known people; geniuses even, as examples to make his point. The poet uses colloquial English and imperatives and starts the poem by using the phrase "excuse me." He does