Look We Have Coming to Dover!

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In addition there is also the description “Blair’d in the cash” in the final stanza, where the use of “Blair” could be interpreted as a reference to former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who controversially decided not to use available restrictions to prevent large scale immigration from many new European Union countries such as Poland. The waves are “ministered,” meaning they obey the needs of the tourists while the immigrants have to fight against them to make any progress. Nagra, whose own parents came to England from the Punjab in the 1950s, conjures a jazzed hybrid language to tell stories of aspiration, assimilation, alienation and love, from a stowaway's first footprint on Dover beach to the disenchantment of subsequent generations.

Some readers may see this as showing waves and tides with this gradual but clear flow and change, or alternatively the movement of people across the world throughout history and different cycles of immigration and emigration.is a poem by Daljit Nagra which considers immigration to the United Kingdom and the development of cultures as they mix and merge in different countries. The poem begins with the speaker describing the terrifying arrival into Dover There is nothing beautiful about this scene.

However, as these pieces of punctuation are generally used to join sentences and words together (in comparison to full breaks with caesura, such as full stops and exclamation marks), it could be seen that this is demonstrating how different cultures and people bring society closer together. These social issues make the poem even more interesting to look back on, and could help students to make a whole range of interesting comparison points with other poems. For example, the first line of every stanza has eight, six, or seven syllables and the fifth somewhere between fourteen and sixteen.It is white, indistinguishable from other similar vehicles and likely the perfect on land camouflage. The beauty of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach scene is contrasted with Nagra’s poem, in which the sea has ‘gobfuls’ in its ‘phlegmed water’ and the cliffs are crumbling and ‘scummed’. One interpretation of the specific use of five could be as a reference to the ‘five oceans’ of the world, which have all proved vital to traditional movement and travel over the centuries. This is most likely to be with others that have similar themes, such as ‘Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn’ and ‘The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled’. The use of words from a variety of languages and origins is an important way in which the merging of cultures is shown, while the structure can be seen to represent cultural cycles.

They are seeking out lives that aren’t marked by fear and would love to be accepted into the normal culture of the day in which they didn’t have to hide. Beyond the title, there is a reference to Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” which is a lyrical poem looking at transitions from old to new and the loneliness that this can cause for an individual. The structure of each stanza is identical, and if turned sideways resembles waves, forming a shape-poem.

The poet uses words in whatever way seems to convey his meaning, regardless of whether this is ‘correct’, and subtly conveys extra layers of meaning.