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      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
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      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
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      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
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      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
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      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
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      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions

​Immigrant by Usha Kishore, eyewear Publishing, 2018. 79 pp. $14.99

Review by Pramila Venkateswaran
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​In the last few decades, the Empire has struck back, writing in the colonizer’s tongue, peopling, and becoming leaders in, the colonizer’s land, continuing to encounter racism and sexism as immigrants who are second and third generation, while figuring out more ways to resist bigoted laws and behavior. Usha Kishore’s Immigrant, a marvelously wrought volume of poems, comes at a vital time in British politics. It exists in the maelstrom of postcoloniality and examines its effect on the everyday lives of people who are othered because of their origin. Immigrants are not simply victims, but learn from their traditions of resistance: “the periphery takes up arms: /  ...marginal aesthetics / of resistance in bhangra dances / and subterranean poetry.”
What happens to the postcolonial body, the immigrant other functioning in the periphery that is central to the mainstream politics polarized between multiculturalism and racism? The immigrants who people Kishore’s poems struggle to be seen and heard in an England that is split between tolerance and preserving the values of Empire. Even the immigrant, like Kishore herself who teaches high school, who can speak about Shakespeare and write a brilliant imitation of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” (“The Jabberwock Replies”), she still has to prove that she belongs, that she is relevant like anyone else in the country. To be seen as people, as equal, is indeed the immigrant’s hope, and Kishore voices this in her evocative verses: “I seek / the ambience of mosaic territory, / sans nations, sans borders, sans disputes.”
Poems to note, too many to mention here, are “Understanding Caliban,” where Kishore deftly moves from describing Caliban’s life, how he was propelled “out of his sea-sorrow into a new world,” to the analogy between Caliban and Indra, both lighting the “fiery metaphors” of the immigrant’s journey in our minds; “Teaching Tagore to 10A/S,” where the character in Tagore’s story becomes the speaker of the poem—her “thoughts drift back to that river bank, / where I left my water pot and my heart.” The poet, stumbling in her effort to explain to her students the great Indian poet magically connects with the students when they engage with the text and “new rain / floods my being;” and “You and Me,” where we encounter the moment of recognition: “my Indian thoughts / fire your British hearts, something in your / Englishness warms my Malayali soul.”
Kishore observes that language does separate us. Although she feels the sadness of writing in an “alien tongue” instead of her mother tongue, that she is “trespass[ing] into English verse,” she recognizes that Sanskrit, that ancient tongue no longer spoken but alive in scripture, poetry and the arts, is indeed her soul language and feeds the spirit of her expression: “Vedas are the distant / soundtrack woven into my mind.”
Immigrant is a symphony of languages, Arabic, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, French and Sanskrit, a music that we hear in London and other European cosmopolitan cities. Yet the discord due to difference is glaring. Kishore lays bare the suffering of immigrants in poem after poem and captures our attention with the beauty of her lines, proving that the diaspora indeed actively shapes mainstream language and culture, that contemporary British literature is shaped by diasporic poets like Usha Kishore.


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​VerseVille (formerly The Enchanting Verses Literary Review) © 2008-2025    ISSN 0974-3057 Published from India. 

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
    • 2021 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXII August 2021
    • 2022 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXIII June 2022
      • ISSUE XXXIV December 2022
    • 2023 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXV August 2023
      • ISSUE XXXVI December 2023 Indian Poetry
    • 2024 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXVII October 2024 Bengali Poetry
    • 2025 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXVIII January 2025 Balkan Poetry
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions