Moniza Alvi - Intro

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This poem is full of confusion and pain. To study it, you need to think about:

This is a poem about confused identity, and the pain and confusion that being of mixed race – and living in a different culture – can cause.

The poet describes how she felt about clothes (such as a salwar kameez and a sari) sent to her from Pakistan, and other material things such as a camel-skin lamp and her mother’s jewellery. She compares the colour and flamboyance of the Pakistani things to her dull and ordinary everyday English wear (‘denim and corduroy’). She feels that she ought to like these beautiful things, but both her friend was not impressed by her Pakistani clothes, and she feels uncomfortable (‘alien’) in them. She recalls stories of coming to England from Pakistan, and she remembers reading news of (the war in) Pakistan, and looking at pictures of Lahore.

The main feeling of the poet is confusion about her identity – she admires the beauty of her Pakistani things, and longs to love that side of her nature, but also feels very ‘English’. She writes: ‘When I eventually went to Pakistan, I certainly didn't feel that was home… But I never feel entirely at home in England’.

She didn’t feel right in the Pakistani clothes and was finding it hard to resolve her mixed-up feelings about her identity (for instance, she thought that the camel-skin lamp was beautiful – but also thought it was cruel to kill a camel to make it).

She says she feels ‘alien in the sitting room’ because ‘I could never be as lovely as those clothes’.

She could see the beauty of Pakistani things such as the mirror-work, but there were many things about Pakistani that she disapproved of much of Pakistani culture – for instance the war, and the beggars and sweeper girls, and the Muslim women forced to stayed in the harem. She regrets that she can’t just be ‘half-English’ (like Aunt Jamila) – Aunt Jamila could be English and Pakistani at the same time, but in Moniza the two identities are in conflict. She finishes by saying that she is ‘of no fixed nationality’; she has no cultural ‘home’.

The Structure of the poem is in free verse, with stanzas of varying length. The poem dots from idea to idea, and every now and again a random phrase comes unexpectedly, such as: ‘My aunts requested cardigans’. This may be to give the idea of a random train of thought of personal memories, drifting from one memory to another, but it also conveys her own uncertainty and lack of structure in her life.

The poet uses enjambment to emphasise key ideas and words, such as ‘peacock blue’ (to emphasise how bright it was) and ‘found myself alone’ (to emphasise how isolated she feels).

The poet uses language to convey her ideas about her confusion and emotional pain.

She writes in the first person, so the reader knows that these are personal memories

Lots of the images are about PAIN, to reinforce the emotional conflict she is feeling about her identity – candy-striped glass bangles/snapped, drew blood (beautiful but painful), her mother’s jewellery was stolen from the car. Even the journey to England was painful – ‘prickly heat had me screaming on the way’.

The poet finishes with a very powerful image of ‘staring through the fretwork at the Shalimar Gardens’. This sums up the confusion the poet is feeling. The ‘fretwork’ refers to the wooden screen of the harem that many Pakistani were forced to stay in; as a teenager in 1960s Britain, Moniza Alvi would have found this restriction horrific. But she can also ‘see’ the beautiful Shalimar Gardens.

The poem creates feelings in me. It makes me remember times that I have felt like a ‘fish out of water’, and helps me understand friends who have had to move house, or move to a new school.

Moniza Alvi - Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan

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