'Look we have coming to Dover!' - blog post by Zhina

‘Look We Have Coming to Dover’

‘Look We Have Coming to Dover’ (‘L’) explores the experience of immigration, beginning with eagerness, descending towards a harsh reality of hardship, although Nagra occasionally masks the serious content with enthusiasm and humour. The preconception of immigrating into England differs to the suffering and poverty many immigrants actually experience, which is established within the poem through the array of metaphors such as ‘stabs in the back’. Moreover, the title is significant as before even having read the poem, there is a portrayal of the energetic optimism of coming to England, and we are introduced to concepts of England that are gleefully dismantled in the rest of the poem. The grammatical errors both in the title and the poem set the context of the speaker whose English is a second language.

The epigraph in the beginning of ‘L’ is from a poem written in 1851 by Matthew Arnold which expresses society’s growing anxiety about the modern secular world. Nagra contrasts this with his optimistic and hopeful approach to immigration, especially by manipulating the intention of ‘Dover Beach’ by quoting ‘so various, so beautiful, so new…’. Deliberately using this quote as an epigraph adds to the sarcasm and wit Nagra portrays. In ‘Dover Beach’ the poet imagines the withdrawal of religion from a civilized England’s shores, and the disorder and conflict he expects to follow. ‘L’ also represents a withdrawal, as one idea of England is replaced by another. Additionally, the visual structure of the poem appears like waves which is effective in setting the scene of Dover. Each stanza has 5 lines, each line increasing in length, evidently a regular structure.

Furthermore, the tone of the poem is bound up in its language. Every stanza has many sound effects with the use of half rhyme, alliteration and assonance, for instance: ‘thunder unbladders’ is an example of assonance. The use of improper English mixed with colloquial English deems the poem as quite conversational and idiomatic. This effect is to make the poem fun, funny, and satirical, with its political undertones coming from the use of words that imply how threatening immigration supposedly is, such as with how Nagra uses words expressed by people who see immigration as a threat to national identity like how the immigrants ‘invade’ in dehumanised ‘swarms’. He uses the sort of metaphors employed by racists whose objectives are to strike up fear of immigration. The poet coins new verbs such as ‘phlegmed’ and ‘unbladders’, as well as colloquial English words which mirrors the mixing of cultures that immigration entails.

‘L’ could be compared to various poems such as: ‘Please Hold’ by Ciaran O’Driscoll, ‘The Map Woman’ by Carol Ann Duffy, and ‘The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled’ by Leontia Flynn. With ‘Please Hold’, ‘L’ shares a similarity in how humour can explore serious themes, as well as a depiction of the flaws of society. ‘The Map Woman’ explores the idea of belonging and identity, which can incorporate both similarities and contrasts to Nagra’s poem. ‘L’ and ‘The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled’ relate through the evident themes of travel, creating a home, and the feeling of alienation.