Look We Have Coming To Dover! - Daljit Nagra Flashcards
What is Look We Have Coming to Dover about? (4 points)
It is about the experience of immigrants to England and has been cleverly written to be read in parallel with Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach
Nagra’s poem reflects the themes of Arnold’s poem, written a hundred years ago, where he imagines the conflict and chaos that might result if there was no religious basis for our society
Nagra also dramatises an uneasy nation, as one idea of England is replaced by another — the latter, Nagra’s vision, is uglier, with hostility to immigrants and pollution
The title is ungrammatical - Nagra is teasing his own people for their incorrect English with gentle humour
What is the structure of Look We Have Coming To Dover? (4 points)
Comprises of five stanzas of five lines each
The structure of each stanza is identical, and if turned sideways, resembles waves, forming a shape-poem
This has been interpreted as representing the shape of the cliffs of Dover, cycles of emigration and immigration, and the five oceans of the world
There is no regular rhyme scheme and enjambed lines create a smooth flow
What is the language and imagery of Look We Have Coming To Dover? (4 points)
The poem is a dramatic monologue - the voice of the poet, using the first person plural ‘we’ and in the last stanza ‘I’
The beauty of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach scene is contrasted with the sea having ‘gobfuls’ in its ‘phlegmed water’ and the cliffs being crumbling and ‘scummed’
Modern Britain is scarred by hostility to immigrants and even the thunder ‘unbladders/yobbish rain’, like the yobs who will attack them
Immigrants are described as animals or objects —‘Stowed in the sea’ and ‘hutched’ - and he uses the language racists use to whip up fear of immigrants who ‘invade’ or ‘swarm’
