Poems From Other Cultures and Traditions - From 'Search For My Tongue' Tatamkhulu Afrika, Maqabane.

Poems From Other Cultures and Traditions

From ’Search For My Tongue’ Tatamkhulu Afrika, Maqabane (1994)

When you read this poem, bear in mind that language and the use of the mother tongue (our own language, the one we were brought up speaking) are very important to any individual. We all take it for granted that we can use our language if we live where we were born. We don't even have to think about it. But when you go to live in another country you have to learn another language, and it can be very confusing. The use of another language, one that is not your own, often functions on an emotional level. Also, after a while you start mixing the two languages. This is the problem faced by the speaker in this excerpt.

Those of you who were not originally English speaking will recognise the dilemma expressed in this excerpt!

Read the poem once or twice. Go through it slowly after that, in your mind relating the use of language (tongue) to the physical tongue.

Some of you will, of course, recognise and understand the Gujerati in the centre of the extract. For some of you this will be your mother tongue! But most of you will be unable to decode it.

So there will be many different reactions to reading this poem. I wish I were present to hear these reactions!

Point of view

Here we have a first-person speaker addressing 'you'. There appears to be a conversation going on, as the 'you' has just asked the question that prompts the rest of the poem. A conversation is appropriate for a poem on language and communication.

Grasping the dilemma

Imagine you had two physical tongues in your mouth. That's how Bhatt asks the listener to perceive the problem. We unconsciously relate language to the tongue. How often have we said to people, 'Have you lost your tongue?' when they fail to give us an answer or when they remain silent? That's because the tongue is one of the crucial organs we use when speaking.

The speaker here has taken a new slant on the question and has said her tongue has indeed been lost, but she means her mother language has been lost, not her physical tongue.

The extended

Notice as you read and study the poem that the whole extract builds on an extended metaphor - the physical tongue as a metaphor for language.

The idea of having two actual tongues (of course the speaker means languages) in your mouth provides a strong physical equivalent of the discomfort felt by someone operating in a foreign language environment.

The nature of this discomfort if elaborated in lines 5-6. Lack of use leads to the loss of the language you feel comfortable in and you have little command over the other one.

Lines 10-14 contain a dreadful . Again, its success depends on your imagining that 'tongue' here means your physical tongue. Imagine you had two tongues and one of them rotted in your mouth because you didn't use it. Then you had to spit it out. In other words your first language, your mother tongue has gone, you think for good and as it no longer lives, you decide not to use it any more.

Fortunately the mother tongue is not so easily got rid of and it returns in dreams. The poem reports these dreams in Gujerati but then they are translated her for us into English in the final section of the poem. Lines 31-38 are the rough equivalents of 17-30 but, of course, they are not the same.

The in this section is that for most of uswe see simply signs on the page, or sounds we don't understand if we use the phonetic transcription. But for the speaker, this is her mother tongue. This is her own language. But what it looks like to the English-only speaker is what English must have looked like to her.

Now read lines 31-35 and study the extended metaphor here of the tongue as a plant that dies during the day, but grows back at night in her dreams.

It grows back,
a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.

There is an air of excitement in the lines created by the repetition of 'grows' and 'bud'. The use of 'grows' three times in one line creates a build-up of speed and anticipation, Then the phrase 'the bud opens' is repeated so that there seems to be a swift and powerful development of the image.

The whole metaphor is of a physical tongue that has rotted away but now starts growing back. Line 32 'grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins' suggests that it is almost like a plant growing swiftly, doesn't it?

The new physical tongue that grows at night, becomes powerful and wrestles with the other tongue (the second language). It is so strong that it wins the tussle and pushes the other tongue aside. Thus in sleep the speaker's mother tongue emerges as strong as ever and functions more powerfully than the second language. The last line tells us,

'It blossoms out of my mouth.'

'Blossoms' is an appropriate word here because it suggests beauty, a flower, spring (the season), new growth or life. The ideas associated with blossom are almost all joyful, as is the experience of realising that you have not lost your original language.

The theme

As opposed to the speaker's personal experience, the can be expressed in more general terms. The language problems posed by having to leave your mother tongue in order to acquire a new language are both practical and emotional. The latter is the more important. But, in fact, the mother tongue is never forgotten.

‘Half Caste’ John Agard

John Agard was born in Guyana in the West Indies and is himself of mixed parentage. He has lived in Britain since 1977, and is well-known on the performance poetry circuit. When you read 'Half-caste' (try it aloud) you will see its possibilities for performance.

The speakers.

The first three lines of the poem, written in Standard English, seem to belong to one speaker. The attitude they contain provokes the rest of the poem from a second speaker.

In the rest of the poem, the spelling has been adapted to give the impression of a West Indian accent and the language also reflects a West Indian of English. The second speaker is good humoured, but very outspoken.

Languange in the poem

I have mentioned the fact that Agard uses spelling to suggest a West Indian accent. A closer look at the grammar and language variations that appear in the poem shows that he has done far more than work on the sounds.

Let's begin by listing some of the spellings, even though you are likely to notice them on your own. Remember that the spellings represent the way the words are pronounced, and that the speaker would not really write them like that. Spellings that you could note as they appear often in the poem are:

yu (you); wha (what); an(and); de (the) dat (that). You can see from these examples that the 'th' sound becomes 'd' in this dialect. Other spelling and pronunciation similar to this are 'wid' (with); dah (the); de (also the); dem (them).

The verb 'to be', with its forms 'is' and 'are', is usually omitted. In lines 17-18 the speaker says

england weather nearly always half-caste...

which omits the 'is' that would appear before 'nearly' in Standard English.
Sometimes the speaker uses 'I', as in lines 38, 40 and 41. Mostly he uses 'Ah'. I imagine that if Agard was reciting this before an audience he would be likely to use 'Ah' as part of his accent. It is quite difficult to sustain absolutely uniform usage when imitating an accent.
'yuself' appears often. Instead of using the standard English 'yourself', which combines the possessive adjective 'your' to describe 'self', the speaker uses the pronoun 'yu'.
Sometimes the final letters are left off, as in 'wha' for 'what'. In line 35, the speaker says 'lookin', leaving off the final 'g'.
Tenses are often differently used or have their endings left off. For instance, line 8 contains the word 'mix', which would be mixed or mixes in Standard English. The writer uses only the stem of the verb. Another example is ''begin' in line 44, which would be 'begins' in standard English.
The possessive form is used differently, as the apostrophe 's' is left off. So in line 17, the speaker uses 'england' instead of 'England's'.
The pronoun 'it' is sometimes left out, as in line 9, where Standard English would say 'it is', not just 'is'. These changes from Standard English demonstrate that the poem is written in a dialect rather than just an accent. Accents are simply the way that people pronounce words but dialects include variations in vocabulary and grammar.

Repetition

The speaker repeats these three lines

explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste...

four times in the poem. What effect does this create?

'I'm Half-Caste'

The first three lines of the poem introduce this concept:

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I'm half-caste

The speaker of these words is clearly making himself ridiculous. He is apologising for standing on one leg, for using only half of the resources available to him (ie legs). As an explanation for this behaviour he says he is half-caste. Agard makes a simple point here which he develops in the rest of the poem. To deny yourself half of what you are makes you look ridiculous. The fact that these lines are in Standard English reflect the fact that their speaker has no voice of his own, he has accepted other people's visions of himself just as he has accepted a standard language.

The main speaker

The second voice in the poem challenges this attitude:

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste

He picks up on the 'mixed race' meaning of the word 'half-caste' and begins an exploration of the idea of mixing things. The speaker cites a number of examples that illustrate productive mixture as a way of attacking the stupidity of seeing mixtures a 'half' of their originals. They are new things which have their own beauties and their own identities.

What is meant by half-caste?

We can look at the examples of 'half-caste' one by one as they occur in the poem.

Picasso and the canvas: this is humorous, as are all the examples. The idea of viewing the mixture of red and green on a canvas as 'half-caste' is ridiculous, The mixture is a new, beautiful and valuable thing.
The example of the English weather would raise a definite laugh in a performance, so read lines 10-22 aloud to see how funny they are. When the speaker starts with the idea of light and shadow mixed in the sky, we have the feeling that he is referring to the black-and-white mixed blood that the term half-caste implies. He also plays on the sound of the word 'half-caste', following it with 'overcast' in lines 19- 20:

in fact some o dem cloud
half cast till dem overcast...

This is not only humorous. The speaker wants to emphasise that the man with the excuse is really no different from so many other things that have mixed qualities.

The speaker personifies the clouds in a way that would make anyone used to the English climate laugh. He imputes mean intentions to the clouds, as though they deliberately mean to ruin the weather:

so spiteful dem don't want de sun...

The word 'spiteful' thus makes the clouds seem like petty and unpleasant personalities.

Tchaikovsky mixing black and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

in fact some o dem cloud
half cast till dem overcast...

so spiteful dem don't want de sun...

The word 'spiteful' thus makes the clouds seem like petty and unpleasant personalities.

Tchaikovsky mixing black and white piano keys to get a half-caste symphony is as ridiculous as the Picasso example, but the choice of black and white as the mixture brings the poem back towards it underlying racial theme.

Half of a person

Having given these examples, the speaker goes on to ridicule the man in other ways, focusing on hearing and sight and touch.

...de keen
half of mih ear (lines 33-34)

and

...de keen
half of mih eye (lines 35-36)

as well as

...half-a-hand (line 39)

Here Agard is challenging the 'half' part of the term half-caste. He is implying that normal human beings simply do not function as 'half' anything. The piling up of ridiculous examples shows the absurdity of such an attitude.

What do you think he is really saying to the other man?

The first set of examples plays with expressions in ordinary speech like 'I have half a mind to do that' or 'keep half an eye on it', but in lines 42-46 the examples become totally ridiculous, so the suggestions of 'half-a dream' or of 'half-a shadow' are impossibilities.

The speaker gives his eloquent speech an ironic twist at the end:

but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story

He gives the monologue this twist by suggesting that tomorrow not only the other man will be whole, but so will the speaker's story. Did you notice that the words 'de whole of' are repeated three times? The effect of this is to emphasise wholeness as opposed to the half-caste that the man has of himself.

While the whole list of examples and suggestions is meant to be a joke and to raise a laugh from the audience, there is a serious to the poem. Agard's point is that being of mixed blood does not make a person incomplete or inferior.

The

Being of mixed parentage can make so-called half-caste people feel that they have to make excuses for themselves. But in fact this is to render oneself less of a human being.

The Blessing Imtiaz Dharker

The

If you live in England it is difficult to imagine what it must be like to have no water. Imtiaz Dharker's poem describes conditions around the city of Bombay where, during the dry season, the temperature can reach 40 degrees. Millions of migrants live on the outskirts of the city, in an area called Dharavi, without official access to its piped water.

The poet looks at what it is like to be in a place where water is so rare that its sudden appearance seems like a gift from God. When a pipe bursts, the rush of people to the water is almost like a religious ceremony.

Figurative language

The first line is startling:

The skin cracks like a pod.

Try to visualise what Dharker has said. The carries associations of pain, dryness, the appearance of an open wound and the sound of a pod cracking. It is thus a very graphic and powerful image. Line 2 tells us that:

There never is enough water

so we have to presume that everyone's skin cracks.

The voice of a kindly god

When the speaker dreams of water, as everyone in this place must do, she does not dream of a rushing torrent or a river, but of the humble drip into a tin mug. This small sound seems to be the 'voice of a kindly god'

Why do you think the in the second is restricted to this limited, humble tin and the drip, and in what way can the voice be godlike?

sometimes, the sudden rush
of fortune.

Look at the metaphor 'the sudden rush of fortune'

1. Explain this metaphor.
2. What does Dharker achieve by using the definite article (the) instead of 'a'?
3. What is the effect of the word 'rush'?
4. How would you interpret fortune?

silver crashes to the ground

On the literal level, this is the water rushing out of the pipe, but on the figurative level we see a pile of silver coins crashing to the ground. The metaphor emphasises the value of the water.

a roar of tongues

This applies to both the water and its effect on the people. It implies a huge reverberating sound, to suggest how much water is coming out of the pipe and how strongly the people react.

highlights polished to perfection

On the literal level we are to see the children's dark skins shining with the water on them, but on the figurative level this means shiny areas on an object being polished. The image adds to the ideas of the wealth attached to the water. Only people with time and money to spare can afford to polish things 'to perfection'.

Religious overtones

The speaker has given us the image of the kindly god. The sudden rush of water seems almost like a gift from that source, and then a 'congregation' (line 12) comes to the pipe. We normally associate congregation with a group of people in a church. The phrase 'a roar of tongues' also has a slightly religious overtone. Finally, as if the kindly god were actually present, the blessing sings over their children's small bones.

Techniques

The most outstanding feature of this poem is its use of but there are other subtleties worth noting.

Line 2 disrupts the usual order of words in a sentence. We might expect 'there is never enough water' but the line reads

There never is enough water

This places rhythmic emphasis on 'never', the key word in the sentence. The second stanza describes the single isolated noise of the drips in predominantly monosyllabic words, to create an onomatopoeic effect.

The rush of people towards the water is reflected in the long tumbling list of words at the end of the third stanza. This list is arranged in a hierarchy, starting with the most valuable water- collecting items, 'pots' and working its way through to 'frantic hands'.

The of the poem shifts from the stark seriousness of the first two stanzas to joyous celebration, with ideas of good fortune, wealth and religious blessings.

The

This poem explores the importance of water in people's lives by describing the joy its sudden appearance can cause.

Presents From My Aunts in Pakistan Moniza Alvi

Although born in Pakistan, Moniza Alvi was brought up in England, the daughter of a Pakistani father and an English mother. This poem explores the dilemma of divided culture, divided families and a 'self' that feels the pull of somewhere else.

Read the poem through at least twice.

The

The 'half-English' speaker receives gifts of clothes, slippers and bangles from her Pakistani relatives. The presents are beautiful but the speaker feels awkward wearing them, feeling that 'denim and corduroy' would be more appropriate. In the relatives would like conventional English clothes in return. The gifts encourage the speaker to think of her family's journey to England and to try to picture her birthplace which she doesn't remember. Pakistan is made more real by news of wars there and the speak tries to imagine returning to a place which is not quite home.

With the arrival of the presents in the poem, Pakistan features prominently. The clothes are described in Stanza 1. You should notice:

the colours
the styles
the changing fashions
their difference from English clothes

What have you noticed about them? Can you think of one or two words that describe them in general?

They are:

exotic
colourful
beautiful
and they demonstrate changing Pakistani fashions - indicating that the speaker received numerous sets of clothing over the years.

In England, the speaker feels 'alien' when she wears them, and the colours would make her conspicuous, as the English do not wear many brightly-coloured clothes. This is already a matter for internal for the speaker.

The conflict

Lines 15 - 25 reveal the effect on the speaker of the conflict occasioned by the gifts. The 'satin silken' tops are things of beauty but she says she was 'alien in the sitting-room' when trying them on, probably indicating that the sitting room is in England and they look too foreign there. She also feels slightly intimidated by the gorgeous clothes, saying she:

could never be as lovely
as those clothes -

The clothes make the speaker embarrassed so that she blushes

My costume clung to me
And I was aflame.
I couldn't rise up out of its fire,

Moniza Alvi turns this around in the next line to make a comment on the relative colourlessness of the English. Her own half-English heritage makes such display seem excessive, whereas her presumably fully Pakistani Aunt Jamila seems perfectly natural in them.

A camel-skin lamp

The costumes set the speaker thinking about cultural relativism. She 'longs' for denim and corduroy, indicating the English side of her nature but she also wants the very Pakistani camel skin lamp that her parents have.

Her English mother cherished her Indian jewellery until it was stolen. The presents are 'radiant' in the wardrobe. The aunts, the senders of the beautiful clothes ironically want boring Marks and Spencers cardigans in return. The speaker's school friend is, however, unimpressed by her clothes.

It is all very well, the poem to suggests, for people from different countries to admire what is different there, but what if you have both sets of desires within yourself?

That other country

The tiny mirrors sewn onto the material seem to be a way of recreating herself in the country she left. She tries to recall her parent's story of her journey to England by boat and uses photographs to help her visualise her birthplace. The conflict in Pakistan brings it alive via newspapers. Sometimes the mirrors reveal her aunts and how they live and finally herself, 'of no fixed nationality', actually in Pakistan looking at the famous Shalimar Gardens.

Techniques

The poem is written in loosely arrange using line length for emphasis. It is also very loosely structured around various autobiographical elements, so that often we have to fill in details by implication. For instance, the mention of 'weekend clothes' indicates that the speaker went to a school where the children wore uniforms. Other details like the theft of the mother's jewellery are not developed but have a convincing autobiographical ring about them. Much of the English background is assumed but generally it seems dull and safe compared with the vibrant and violent Pakistan.

Theme

Beyond the story of the presents and the speaker's reactions to them lies the dilemma of many people who have no certain identity or nationality. While they may grow up in one country, family and other links mean they never lose the impressions and reality of their country of birth.

‘Ogun’

Ogun is a West African god of thunder. He is also thought of as a creator. While this poem is about the speaker's uncle, we obviously have to work out what 'thunder' signifies.

The craft of woodwork

The first twenty lines tell us about the speaker's uncle and his talent for making wooden artefacts. The first two couplets, that is, lines 1-4 show us the range of things the speaker's uncle dealt with. His work involved making things like tables and chairs; fitting things - he 'balanced doors on'; and shaping things such as 'dug out coffins' (lines 1-2).The fact that the wood shone 'like his short-sighted glasses' suggests that the woodworker and his creations shone as if they were all part of the same thing - the uncle, the maker of furniture.

The knuckles of his hands

Lines 5-8 tell us something about the uncle's physical characteristics. You will notice that the poet creates an emphatic through and an unusual use of line breaks. Look, for instance, at lines 5 to 7:

The knuckles of his hands were sil-
vered knobs of nails, hit, hurt and flat-
ened out with blast of heavy hammer.

You will see that the stresses fall on certain words that create the impression of hard knobs -'sil...', 'knobs', 'nails'. Then we are told why the knuckles are like that - they have been hit many times with the hammer. Look back at the lines above. The stresses continue to fall regularly on certain words like hammer blows -'nails', 'hit', 'hurt and flat...'. You are probably wondering why the poet separates 'flat-' from the rest of the word. Think about how a hammer blow sounds, first a hard sharp noise and then a diminishing echo. This sound effect is reproduced by dividing the word. The effect of hammer blows is carried on into line 7 with 'blast of heavy hammer', in which you can still hear the sound. If you read all those lines aloud you will hear continuous blows such as you would hear in a workshop.

Knock-kneed and flat-footed

Lines 7-8 describe other features of the uncle's body. He is

knock-kneed, flat-
footed and his clip clop sandals slapped across the ...

The poet uses alliteration to enable us to visualise his uncle at work. The 'kn' sounds suggest the hollowness of the uncle's bony knees. The words 'flat-footed', aided by the line break has to be read slowly and deliberately and reflects the way he moves. Alliteration and combine in the phrase 'his clip clop sandals slapped...' to give the sound of the sandals flapping.

The sounds of the workshop

Lines 13-14 continue the alliterative and onomatopoeic effects. 'Shaping squares for locks' needs careful reading, while 'rat tat tat' is a direct echo of the sound of the hammer tapping. From this line until line 20 it is as if the poet is creating a collection of sound effects that suggest the sounds coming from the workshop. These particular sound effects cease with 'squeaking square'.

The destruction by progress

In spite of his manifest skill, the speaker's uncle is poor on account of progress and fashion. His craft is forgotten in favour of articles like cabinets, formica tops, tube chairs and thin, flimsy beds, things that we can recognise as Western and modern in .

Steel chairs

Consider the images in lines 23-24:

spine-curving chairs made up of tubes, with hollow
steel-like bird bones that sat on rubber ploughs.

What do you think the poet is describing here?

The life of wood

Line 27 shows the speaker's uncle clinging to his craft with his 'block of wood that would have baffled them'. In the next few lines, the speaker describes the wood and his uncle's handling of it so that we realise that his art is a living experience. Line 28 tells us that the woodworker used 'knife and gimlet care', which suggests a very close attention to the details in the wood. We realise that the quality of wood is just as important to this man as the artefacts he creates. The fact that he works on this wood on Sundays shows that he works on the wood for love rather than to make a living out of it.

However, it becomes clear that this is not a pastime. This carving that engrosses the man has another terrible function relating to his loss of trade, but, more than that, the loss of appreciation of his art.

The 'knotted hurts' are really the knots that mark the wood, but the uncle invests them with feeling. This is really a projection of his own hurt as he handles the wood. You will notice that the wood assumes a life of its own as he works. It 'swelled and shivered, breathing air'. The wood seems to move under his hands. We should this effect with that of the steel-tube furniture that is more popular, to see that the latter is lifeless.

What are the 'rings of time'? They are the rings that you will see if you saw a piece of wood straight through the trunk so that the inside is visible. The number of rings tells the expert how old the wood is.

Retreat into the forest

The last section of the poem holds the suggestion of a primitive forest such as we would find in West Africa. What would the point of this be? Surely it is that the wood becomes for the man the embodiment of that place where anger resided, the ancient forest where Ogun could be found. Read lines 34-39 and think about the here. Is it pleasant or beautiful? No, it has a sad and angry effect. First the woodworker hears the 'creak of forests', which with its sound introduces the picture of the forest. The creaks would represent the sounds of the very old trees there. The point is that the uncle, through the wood, 'recalls' or experiences a primitive, ancient forest, where forces that do not seem to exist in the modern world come into play. We are near the very source of his anger.

Strange faces

The forest is peopled by strange faces which create the images of the man's anger.

'green lizard faces gulped'. With this reference the poet takes us far away from the contemporary world suggested by the steel furniture.
'grey memories with moth eyes' are vague shapes that do not seem to belong to anything identifiable. They are intended to create ancient forces that probably existed in West Indian and West African lore. The fact that the faces 'watched him from their shadows' makes us feel that he has touched a state that is far from everyday experience, a primitive state far in the past. The 'soft liquid tendrils' that 'leaked among the flowers' also suggests vegetation far in the past and far from civilisation. Look at the word 'leaked'. What does it suggest to you? It makes me see very fast developing plants whose growth can almost be seen.

This ancient forest is a place where civilised emotions are absent, and there exist the essential emotions like unbridled anger suggested by the figure of Ogun.

Ogun

The most interesting is that of the 'rigid black thunder' that 'came stomping up the trunks'. This is why the poem is called 'Ogun', This is the god of thunder. Why is it black and rigid? The god's feeling is that of anger, because that is what thunder suggests with its rolling crashing sound. "Black" suggests the depth of anger and "rigid" tells us that this feeling cannot be reasoned with. It is implacable. Also the word 'stomping' is the heavy sound of someone walking with that anger. The speaker's uncle has never heard the sound in his hammer before, so we can guess that Ogun has entered his life with an anger that he has never experienced. Of course, he has intuitively felt the life in the wood beneath his hands, an ancient life as seen in the rings and whorls of his piece of wood. Now the description of the knots as 'knotted hurts' makes sense. In some way the feelings of the man and the characteristics of the wood have become one and the same thing.

A shattered Sunday shop?

Now we observe the shape the wood is taking under the man's hands as he works in his 'shattered /Sunday shop'. We presume it is shattered for two reasons:

first, the man's trade has gone, and he works on the wood on Sundays, his life with woodwork broken.
secondly, his feeling of primitive anger has taken over and is manifesting itself in the shape he is making. He has never made anything as terrible as this carving.

The face of Ogun

The wood carver creates a primitive face. Look at its features. The face is like that of ancient wood carvings of gods, with closed 'shuttered' eyes. Of course, it is the god of thunder that we are seeing, Ogun. Shuttered eyes cannot see, so we can imagine that the anger he feels is blind anger. Originally the wood was moist, as you will see if you look back at line 33, where we are told: 'Its contoured grain still tuned to roots and water.'

But now it shows an image of a person afflicted by distress and disease. What do the 'slack anciently everted lips' tell us? Everted means turned inside out and so the face is distorted. All the other details of the face add up to ruin:

eaten by pox
ravaged by rat/and woodworm
dry cistern mouth,
cracked/gullet crying for the desert
heavy black/enduring
jaw lost pain, lost iron;

All these images are those of a face being destroyed and eaten away. Pox is a disease that leaves dreadful scars and eats away the skin so that the sufferer loses beauty forever. Rats and woodworm are scavengers, creatures that also eat away. This is really the spiritual state of the speaker's uncle, eroded by his anger.

The of the 'dry cistern mouth' suggests that anger has dried the figure out but in the next image we are told of the

cracked
gullet crying for the desert

Why would his gullet cry for the desert? The desert is a dry, empty place where nothing grows. The throat is crying for the desert, it actually wants a condition where people die though lack of water. As an image of the man's dry state of mind, it is bleak and terrible.

The 'heavy black/enduring jaw' completes the face of Ogun. It is an angry jaw, one that will not be placated.

The final line states that the face of Ogun is the image of the man's anger. Or does it? Possibly the figure is Ogun but it is also possible that the creator of the figure, the uncle is Ogun, since Ogun was a creator god.

The

Progress and modernity can destroy creativity and the people who live by it.

‘Charlotte O’Neal’s Song’ from ‘Passengers’ Fiona Farrell

This poem is taken from the play Passengers. This was written by Fiona Farrell as an investigation of the lives of the thousands of women who emigrated from Europe to New Zealand in the latter part of the 19th Century. These women were given assisted passages by the government and were mostly fated to become wives to the settlers. Little is known about the women in some cases except for the ship's records that Fiona Farrell used as source material.

When you read the list, you will notice that one girl is only fourteen and some of the others not much older. I think that this immediately makes us question why girls of this age were leaving England to start life in on the other side of the world. Fiona Farrell has chosen one name from the list, Charlotte O'Neil, and has created an imaginary and attitude for her subject. The name suggests an Irish origin but there is no further evidence for this.

The speaker

The speaker is Charlotte O'Neil herself. She is a general servant somewhere in England or Ireland. The year is 1871. She uses simple everyday language that would not be out of place in a modern poem except for her references to various 19th century objects. Judging by her tone, she has plenty of courage and knows how to answer up for herself, she might even be described as cheeky.

Charlotte is a good example of the thousands of lower-class girls who were forced to take on domestic work in wealthy homes in order to survive. These girls, many of them without family, had no money and had little chance of marrying out of their class, so their hopes of betterment were few. Charlotte has obviously decided to take her life into her own hands and sail to another country in the hope of a better life.

Charlotte's song

Her 'song' is addressed to her lady employer, who seems to have driven her hard and been very demanding. All Charlotte's complaints show us that she has survived a very hard existence in which there was no time for herself.

The poem was sung in the play but there are a number of places where the is disturbed, for instance lines 9 and 13. Also the is quite irregular, as are the line lengths. If this is a song it is quite an unruly one.

It's freedom from metrical restraint is an appropriate expression of Charlotte's freedom from domestic service and her 'feisty' . As this is a song, I am going to refer to verses instead of stanzas.

Verse 1

You can see that the work Charlotte did was almost entirely physical. (Many of these poor girls were worn out with work by the time their youth was over.)

While in many wealthy homes the maids had specific jobs such as answering the door or looking after the parlour, Charlotte is listed in the ship's register as a 'General servant'. This means that she had to do everything in her employer's home. In verse 1 we see the things she had to do: answer the bell, polish the floor, scrape out the grate, wash and scrub. These are all hard tasks and would severely tax anybody. Parquet flooring is made out of blocks of wood and takes a great deal of care and polishing.

The word 'plate' in line 4 means cutlery or general table utensils and there would have been a great many such items. We don't know what Charlotte scrubbed, but her use of the word 'raw' has a painful effect, and has of ugliness. Her hands, if raw, would be red and swollen with the soap and hot water. The least difficult task mentioned in the verse is answering the bell but Charlotte mentions it first.

You rang your bell and I answered

She seems as much upset by the loss of her freedom as she is by the hard physical labour.

Verse 2

The verse starts with a between the employer's bed and Charlotte's. There is a great difference between a 'silken pillow' and an 'attic cot'. A cot and would have been very hard, narrow and uncomfortable. During the nineteenth century the household staff in large houses were given rooms upstairs away from the family and guests, and their conditions were very poor. There was no luxury like heating.

The poor girl's lot

That's the way it should be, you said,
That's the poor girl's lot.

What does this tell us about Charlotte's employer's view of class?

One of the most unpleasant of Charlotte's tasks was to empty the 'chamber pot'. In the period in which Charlotte lived, people generally did not leave their rooms once they had gone to bed. They used a chamber pot instead of going to the toilet at night, so it was Charlotte's job to empty the contents in the morning.

The poor deserve the gate

Charlotte's employer clearly felt it her duty to 'educate' her.

The rich man earns his castle, you said,
The poor deserve the gate.

This is a reference to that popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. This verse is usually omitted nowadays because of its undemocratic sentiments.

The rich man at his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and mighty,
He ordered their estate.

(Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848)

There is an entire social attitude and practice attached to this comment. The wealthy and privileged actually believed that they were by birth deserving of the wealth, possessions and position that they inherited in , and that in some way they had 'earned' these things. They believed equally of the poor that they 'deserved' their miserable circumstances. There lines also refer to the story of Lazarus in the Bible. Lazarus spent his life begging at a rich man's gate but went to heaven, whilst the rich man went to hell.

Verse 3

In this verse, Charlotte describes what seems to have been the most humiliating of her work experiences, showing 'respect' to her social superiors. And it is in this verse that she turns the tables on her employer.

Sir and Ma'am

Read lines 15-17, which tell us what Charlotte had to do as a social inferior. She had to call upper class men 'sir' and women 'ma'am', and she had to curtsey to show respect and to be mindful of her own lower status, probably when she opened the door to them. Now she will 'never' have to address anyone in this way again. This shows an attitude of determination and a conviction that she has changed her life for good.

Open your own front door

A defiant note creeps into Charlotte's song now:

You can bake your bread
And make your bed
And answer your own front door.

This suggests that Charlotte's employer will now have to do her own work, and shows that the song is clearly a revenge fantasy. The real employer would simply have hired a new girl. The mention of the front door in line 20 is significant, as it is the entrance to the house and that is where guests are greeted and shown in. Perhaps Charlotte has grown tired of opening someone else's door to guests that are not her own. She has had no pride of ownership. It is obviously a matter for resentment as Charlotte repeats the phrase 'open your own front door' twice in the song.

Verse 4

There is an air of finality in the things Charlotte lists here concerning her work, on account of the use of the present perfect tense, indicating completed action. In this fourth verse, she shows that she has really finished with her employer, and sees her departure from the house as a sort of revenge.

I've...

In lines 20-21 she repeats 'I've...' (the present perfect tense) three times:

I've cleaned your plate
And I've cleaned your house
And I've cleaned the clothes you wore.

On the one hand this tells us that these were the things Charlotte had to do for years for her employer, but the use of the present perfect tense suggests also that she has now done them for good. This part of her life is finished.

As if she were actually addressing her employer, she says,

But now you're on your own, my dear.
I won't be there any more.

The use of 'my dear' in the above line is something that a servant would never do in real life. Charlotte imagines that her employer was very dependent on her, and the Charlotte uses here is triumphant. She obviously derives a great deal of satisfaction at the idea of her employer having to do all her own work.

I'll do it when I please

Turning to her own life and the gratification of doing the things she was deprived of during her employment, she relishes the following:

And I'll eat when I please
And I'll sleep where I please

And you can open your own front door.

When we look back at the rest of the song, we can see that the things that annoyed Charlotte the most and encroached on her personal freedom and comfort were her hard bed, her lack of sleep and the fact that she was forced to admit an inferiority that she does not feel. Notice that the song has only two tenses - the past and the future. There is no reference to Charlotte's present on her way to New Zealand.

The

There are several themes to this poem. We could mention class , or the desire for freedom but the one that is most relevant to the Other Cultures and Traditions selection is what drives someone away from home and the familiar towards new and unknown worlds? The answer in this case is the desire to escape the known bad in exchange for a possible future good.

Nothing’s Changed Tatamkhulu Afrika, Maqabane (1994)

You will not need this information for your examination, but you would not appreciate the poem fully without it.

All extracts from Tatamkhulu Afrika, Maqabane (1994)

District Six is (was) a famous residential district in Cape Town, South Africa, and was home to the largest mixed-race group outside Cairo . It was colourful and vibrant, with a lively street life. You could see people in Muslim robes in the streets, men wearing the fez, women in long robes - in fact, all sorts of people. There was a large Jewish community there, as well as many white people. District Six was a place much-loved by those who lived there. It was old and a bit tatty, a relic from pre-electricity days. The houses and shops were very close together, and, to be truthful, it was not very safe. But it was a part of Cape Town's culture, and when the Apartheid Government ordered it to be destroyed, there was general mourning. Many famous South African writers, artists and musicians lived there, and there is a fair body of poetry about District Six. Since then the area has never been restored or built up, and the only thing of real note there now is the original St Mark's Church, a large technikon (polytechnic) and some flats. Otherwise it remains empty.

Tatamkhulu Afrika was brought up in Cape Town and lived in District Six. In the apartheid years he became a member of the ANC and was banned from writing under his original name. He therefore adopted his ANC code name as his own. 'Nothing's Changed' is an autobiographical poem.

The speaker

The speaker is obviously a previous resident of District Six. Perhaps he has been in exile and has returned to his 'home'.

The title

The title is ironic, you will see. Physically everything has changed. Nothing is as it used to be. We will have to see what it is that has not changed.

The

The speaker has returned to a deserted District Six, finding only the odd building indicating that white people now live there. Now read lines 1-8, the first stanza.

Amiable weeds

These lines express the deterioration that District Six has suffered since the 1960s, when it was razed to the ground. Look for the images that suggest this deterioration and neglect:

'stones'
'seeding grasses'
'bearded seeds'
'cans'
'purple-flowering amiable weeds'

What visual impression do all these images collectively give you?

Recognition Read 2, lines 9-16. There is nothing in the way of buildings or anything else familiar, so how does the speaker experience recognition? He feels it in his body, hands, feet, skin and lungs. In other words it is an intuitive recognition. Lines 15-16 deal with the speaker's emotional response:

...the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.

What exactly is this emotion? Is it ordinary anger?

Brash with glass

Read lines 17-24

Something has changed, as the speaker mentions a new building, an inn, in a very modern , with a large notice bearing its name.
The Port Jackson trees are 'incipient' (growing and threatening to take over) These trees are from Australia, so are foreigners in South Africa. Their presence here suggests that intruders are there in place of the original inhabitants.

This is borne out with the

new, up-market, haute cuisine
guard at the gatepost
whites only inn.

This is indeed an intrusion on the old District Six. This speaks of modernity and smartness. It speaks of white suburban culture.

As for the 'whites only' statement, that is a relic of the Apartheid era, which adds to the speaker's anger. And it is important to note that this is something that has not changed for the speaker.

Crushed ice white glass

Lines 27-32

Who presses their nose to glass? Children, of course, but also people who are excluded and want to see inside. What is it that excludes this speaker, other than the fact that he doesn't belong now that District Six has gone?

crushed ice white glass,
linen falls,
the single rose.

These are symbols of smart white suburban living, so are very foreign to the spirit of District Six. You can imagine the modern glassware, the classic curtains and a vase with a single rose. The speaker is excluded from this, and would not want to be part of it.

By complete there is the working man's café down the road. There are various things in this café that make it almost a cultural sign. We could mention particularly the 'bunny chows' that are so typical of places like District Six. What is a bunny chow?

The speaker has given details of the café, so try to imagine it. Notice his comment in line 40:

it's in the bone.

What do you think that means? Yes, it means that it's inborn, or comes naturally. We sometimes say 'In the marrow'.

Small mean O

The final stanza shocks us, because the changes. The speaker has been through different stages of nostalgia and anger, but now he shows an of himself that makes us see him in another light.

Pressing his nose against the glass, being an outsider, was a boyhood experience, an apartheid experience. But he is accompanied by feelings that we don't quite understand. Why is his mouth a 'small mean O'? Perhaps it indicates the feelings he had as a child, ungenerous, resentful feelings, even destructive ones. We find out the real reason in the final four lines of the poem:

Hands burn
for a stone, a bomb,
to shiver down the glass.
Nothing's changed.

He refers to the days when activists used bombs and other weapons against the apartheid regime. When he sees white culture moving in however small a way to where District Six was, his hands 'burn'. That explains itself. Have you noticed that his anger is always described in burning images? The speaker is familiar with such weapons.

Nothing's changed

Perhaps we can now try to write down or think of the things that really haven't changed:

The speaker's familiarity with the locale
the whites only inn as opposed to the working man's café
the meanness or envy of a child bred under apartheid
his desire for weapons
and most of all his anger and hopelessness

District Six has changed, but the speaker's feelings haven't.

Style

The language of this poem is very straightforward with a regular and mostly eight line stanzas. We notice immediately that stanza four is broken up. Two of its lines stand out on their own. In this instance the speaker has just seen a 'whites only inn' and comments

No sign says it is:
but we know where we belong.

The phrase is an echo of the one used earlier about District Six

District Six
no board says it is:
but my know,

These two ideas are central to the whole poem and explain why the lines are given such prominence. The speaker knows in his bones where he should be, but the place has been colonised by middle class white South Africans. In the old South Africa blacks and whites were separated by the law, now they are separated by wealth.

Notice also in stanza two how Afrika achieves a shocking intensity by simple line arrangement

District Six.
No board says it is:
but my feet know,
and my hands,
and the skin about my bones,
and the soft labouring of my lungs,
and the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.

The long list of 'and's gives an impression of how fully and deeply familiar this place is to the speaker. They also establish a pattern which the reader comes to expect. This means that on the final line when the 'and' turns to 'anger' we are surprised.

Theme

District Six has changed, but the speaker's feelings haven't because the new South Africa operates an apartheid (separation) based on wealth.

Comparing the poems within themes

Look at the first three poems again. "Search for my Tongue", "Unrelated Incidents" and "Half-Caste" all incorporate dialect and the poets make use of a different language (other than Standard English) in their poems. You will need to be able to compare these poems carefully and be able to write about each one in comparison to another. Explore the attitude of the poet towards these dialects or different languages - in "Unrelated Incidents" the poet draws attention to the way in which television newsreaders normally speak and how the way that we speak affects people's attitudes towards us. In "Search for my Tongue" the poet tells us of the frustrations experienced when you are speaking a foreign language other than your mother tongue. In "Half-Caste" the poet also uses dialect to mock people that use the term 'half-caste'.
"Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan" and "Hurricane Hits England" deal with the theme of having roots or origins in one country and living in another. Here you would need to explore how the poets put this theme across in their poems. This would include looking at figurative language and the poets' attitudes towards the subject matter. In "Presents…" the poet explores the difficulty of having 'two' cultures - she has her roots in the one culture, although she is living in another country. In "Hurricane…" the poet is also torn between her roots and her living in England. You must look at these two poems together in terms of their structure and language.
Look at the prejudices found in "An Old Woman" and "Nothing's Changed" - these poems deal with the way in which one culture treats another. In "An Old Woman", the poet is immediately prejudiced when he meets the old beggar woman. But his attitude towards her changes and she becomes more than simply a beggar. In "Nothing's Changed", the poet explores racial prejudice during the apartheid years in South Africa. You would need to look at all aspects of these two poems and compare them carefully. Look at the poets' attitudes - how can you see their attitudes through their poetry? Is it in the language use or in the specific tone of the poem? Does the poet use many figures of speech and imagery or does he keep the poem simple and achieve his effect through this? These are the types of questions you should be asking yourself when you make a comparison between poems. Do not forget to mention any similarities in the poems - especially when looking at the theme.

Comparing the poems in terms of their structure

Under structure, we include the style of the poem, its format, and . Remember also to look at the (word choice) and the effective use of and punctuation in the poem. Under format you could look at how the poem is set out - is it a set format like a or is the poem written in . Also look at the length of the stanzas and see if they contribute to the meaning of the poem. Remember when looking at these aspects to comment on why you think the poet has used them. Do not just identify the relevant concept.

Look at the language used in the following poems: "Search for my Tongue", "Unrelated Incidents" and "Half-Caste". Look carefully at the incorporation of dialects or in the case of "Search…" the incorporation of a different language to make a point. Look at the use of the Scottish dialect in "Unrelated Incidents" and be able to comment on what the poet's attitude is towards the use of Standard English for presenters. What is the poet's attitude in "Half-Caste"? Who is he scornful towards? How is he able to put his point across so successfully? Does the use of dialect or a different language enhance the meaning of the poem and the poet's message?
In "Blessing" the poet deals with the image of water and what it means to a community. Look at the religious metaphor in "Blessing" and compare it to the metaphor of the hurricane in "Hurricane" and what it means to the poet. In this way you will be looking at the use of language in the two poems.
"Charlotte O'Neil's Song" is a song in which the poet tells us of Charlotte's fight for her freedom. She writes with a particular rhyme scheme which enhances the idea of a "song". The rhythm in this poem is also regular and contributes to the song-like structure of the poem. The structure of this poem could be compared to the structure in "Ogun" in which the poet writes in definite couplets. Also look at the posibility that "Charlotte…" is quite a simple poem with no elaborate images, compared to "Ogun" which has more complex images. The simplicity of "Charlotte…" could also be compared to any of the other poems which use more elaborate imagery and figurative language. For instance, in "An Old Woman", the poem seems to start off simple and then becomes more detailed in terms of its imagery. You could explore this aspect and contrast it with any of the other poems.