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20 - Vernacular Voices

Fashioning Idiom and Poetic Form

from (III) - Here to Stay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Susheila Nasta
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Mark U. Stein
Affiliation:
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
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Summary

Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. On the stage and also on the page, it constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole to commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, whilst others adapt Jamaican Creole to celebrate folk culture and explore the postcolonial metropolis. Using modified forms of Guyanese Creole, Grace Nichols frequently constructs gendered voices and John Agard celebrates linguistic playfulness. The emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ indicates that borders between linguistic varieties are neither absolute nor static. Daljit Nagra’s heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglishd’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Nagra’s mainstream success also indicates the clout of vernacular voices in poetry, which can connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, record linguistic varieties, and endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. These double-voiced poetic languages are also read here as signs of resistance against monologic ideologies of Englishness.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Vernacular Voices
  • Edited by Susheila Nasta, Queen Mary University of London, Mark U. Stein, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108164146.022
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  • Vernacular Voices
  • Edited by Susheila Nasta, Queen Mary University of London, Mark U. Stein, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108164146.022
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Vernacular Voices
  • Edited by Susheila Nasta, Queen Mary University of London, Mark U. Stein, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
  • Online publication: 19 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108164146.022
Available formats
×