What is the Structure and Language of the poem 'Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan'?

  

How does Moniza Alvi use the structure and language of her poem to convey her ideas?  

  

Links

Main Sources

Structure and Language - some ideas

BBC Bitesize - simple explanation

  

brill BBC podcast (text version)

  

and a VERY difficult game from the English department of King Edward VII school, Leicestershire.

  

First, we need to make some Brief Notes:

 

What do the Structure and Language Ideas and the BBC Bitesize webpage say about the structure and language of the poem?

  

(if you wish, here is space for other notes/ideas from other websites)

  

  

  

Now make your own Notes about the Structure and Language of 'Presents...'....

(REMEMBER - in your notes, you MUST support your ideas by referring to the text of the poem.)

  

The MEANING of 'Presents from my Aunts...' is that Moniza Alvi is agonising about whether she wants to be Pakistani or English, - and what she ought to want.

  

  

Mouseover here to see the text of the poem

Let's start by looking at STRUCTURE of the poem (for ideas, mouseover here).  

Choose THREE things you notice about the STRUCTURE of the poem and - for each - explain how Alvi uses them to get across her meaning.

  

  

     

Mouseover here to see the text of the poem

Now let's go on to think about the LANGUAGE of the poem (for ideas, mouseover here).  

Choose THREE things you notice about the LANGUAGE of the poem and - for each - explain how Alvi uses them to get across her meaning.

     

     

  

Mouseover here to see the text of the poem

Finally, choose two particularly powerful words and phrases from the poem and explain why - for you - they drive home so powerfully the meaning of the poem.

  

  

  

  

Your name:

      

Your form:

  

 

    


They sent me a salwar kameez
            peacock-blue,
                  and another
   glistening like an orange split open,
embossed slippers, gold and black              5
            points curling.
   Candy-striped glass bangles
            snapped, drew blood.
   Like at school, fashions changed
            in Pakistan -                                    10
the salwar bottoms were broad and stiff,
            then narrow.
My aunts chose an apple-green sari,
   silver-bordered
            for my teens.                                   15

I tried each satin-silken top -
   was alien in the sitting-room.
I could never be as lovely
            as those clothes -
   I longed                                                   20
for denim and corduroy.
   My costume clung to me
            and I was aflame,
I couldn't rise up out of its fire,
   half-English,                                            25
            unlike Aunt Jamila.

I wanted my parents' camel-skin lamp -
   switching it on in my bedroom,
to consider the cruelty
            and the transformation                   30
from camel to shade,
   marvel at the colours
            like stained glass.

My mother cherished her jewellery -
   Indian gold, dangling, filigree,                35
            But it was stolen from our car.
The presents were radiant in my wardrobe.
   My aunts requested cardigans
            from Marks and Spencers.

 

My salwar kameez                                               40
   didn't impress the schoolfriend
who sat on my bed, asked to see
   my weekend clothes.
But often I admired the mirror-work,
   tried to glimpse myself                                     45
            in the miniature
glass circles, recall the story
   how the three of us
            sailed to England.
Prickly heat had me screaming on the way.        50
   I ended up in a cot
In my English grandmother's dining-room,
   found myself alone,
            playing with a tin-boat.

I pictured my birthplace                                      55
   from fifties' photographs.
            When I was older
there was conflict, a fractured land
   throbbing through newsprint.
Sometimes I saw Lahore -                                   60
            my aunts in shaded rooms,
screened from male visitors,
   sorting presents,
         wrapping them in tissue.

Or there were beggars, sweeper-girls                  65
   and I was there -
            of no fixed nationality,
staring through fretwork
            at the Shalimar Gardens.

 

Structure - hints

Think about:

(Lacking Visual Structure Really Ruins Poems)

•   Line length

•   Visual layout

•   Stanzas - how the content is organised

•   Rhyme and rhythm

•   Repetition

•   Punctuation

(and WHY the poet has chosen to do that).

Language - hints

Think about:

(Don't Speak Quietly In This Lesson)

•   Dialect

•   who is Speaking

•   Are there any Questions and commands

•   Images, similes and metaphors

•   Tone

•   Literary techniques such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, personification etc.

(and WHY the poet has chosen to do that).