Moving Between Different Cultures in Poetry

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Moving Between Different Cultures in Poetry

For my essay I will be looking at two poems which deal with the

experience of moving between different cultures, these are Half-Caste

and Search for My Tongue. These poems are written from experience.

John Agard the author of Half-Caste was born in Gugana and moved to

Britain in 1977. He is half-caste himself and his poem expresses his

feelings about the term half-caste.

Sujata Bhatt the authoress of Search for My Tongue was born in India

in 1956, her family moved to the United States of America in the

1960's and she now lives in Germany. In her poem Search for My Tongue

she explains how she feels about having two different languages her

birth language, Gujerati and her second language, German.

Half-Caste and Search for My Tongue, create very vivid images, which

makes it easier for the reader to interpret and understand both the

poems and the authors' opinion on the different cultures.

Half- Caste creates many images, by using descriptive language and

humour. It creates such images as a man, 'standing on leg' and having

'half mih ear' because he is only half-caste so he only has half what

a normal person would have but it also creates images about objects

'mix a red an green is a half-caste canvas' and even music 'mix a

black key wid a white key is a half-caste symphony'. This helps the

reader to understand how the author is feeling about the term

half-caste, and can also come to a conclusion about the term

themselves. All the imagery in this poem makes the reader think about

how anybody who has ever been called half-caste feels.

Search for My Tongue creates a very vivid image using very descriptive

metaphors, 'it grows back, a stump of a shoot, grows ...

... middle of paper ...

...age which creates vivid

images for the reader. Using gujerati in the middle of the poems shows

that her mother tongue, her birth language, is still strong and at

times, even stronger then her second language.

In conclusion both of these poems deal with the issues faced when

moving between different cultures in their own ways. They both use

language and imagery to express their messages Half- Caste explores

the way that we use the term 'half-caste' in our vocabulary and

exaggerates it. This is to a great effect as it makes the reader think

more about racial issues and the way that we treat people from

different cultures. Search for my Tongue deals with moving between

different cultures by actually writing about the language barriers and

losing your identity. This is how we can link the poems together and

show how people move between different cultures.

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