dialects, idiolects and multilingual poetries 195In addition, for Bruce-Novoa ‘Bilingualism implies moving from
one language code to another’, whereas ‘interlingualism implies the
constant tension of the two at once’.^66 This tension is illustrated in
the images of the reclamation of land near the freeway by indig-
enous plants. The apricot, cherry and walnut trees are named as
‘Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales’, and we are told that old women
come to collect the spinach, purslane and mint: ‘Espinaca, verdola-
gas, yerbabuena’ (p. 39 ). One effect of the interlingual processes of
the poem is to present the neglected physical spaces as defamiliar-
ised, yet also emotionally proximate. Cervantes seeks a placing of
these confl icts within what she names ‘los campos extraños de esta
ciudad’ [the strange fi elds of this city] (p. 39 ). The transcription of
these tensions between warring languages creates a form of poetic
realism that challenges assumptions and preconceptions.
IDIOLECTS OR IDEOLECTICAL POETRIES
The inclusion of dialect in poetry is often a way of affi rming
identities – often regional, national, economic and racial – that
may be seen in a dialectical relationship with standard English
use. Derek Walcott’s book-length Omeros ( 1990 ) is often cited
as a poetics of creolisation, with its complex infl ection of epic,
Caribbean speech acts and local history. We may also consider the
advent of a distinct topography of Caribbean speech of the late
sixties which Brathwaite has taken to be the affi rmation of ‘nation
language’.^67 A further understanding might also include idiomatic
linguistic use, often referred to as idiolectical language use. The
OED suggests that an idiolect refers to ‘the linguistic system of one
person, differing in some details from that of all other speakers of
the same dialect or language’.^68
The word ‘idiolect’ surfaces in Charles Bernstein’s provocative
essay of 1996 ‘Poetics of the Americas’, where it is transmuted
to ‘ideolect’. In this essay Bernstein argues for an ‘ideolectical’
approach to an American poetry, reliant less on a multiplicity
of identities, than a plurality of different languages. Taken at
its broadest sense, Bernstein’s ‘ideolects’ draw a vast perimeter
around an experimental poetics and the conceptualisation of a