dialects, idiolects and multilingual poetries 201descriptions of the relationship. His friends work at the ‘Sugar Puff
factory’ and his partner is described as dressed in ‘fi lm-star red’ as
well as ‘Dulux of British poodle pink’ and is accompanied by her
doctor, ‘the Avon Lady’ (p. 26 ). Nagra presents cultural complexi-
ties which require assiduous deciphering.
This process of interpretation is made complex by Nagra’s
positioning of the speech patterns in his poetry. Gunning proposes
that Nagra’s poems are ‘Trapped between racist expectations that
delimit the meanings open to the racialized or ethnicized subject,
and the burden of representation that would deny the particularity
of his enunciation in order to impose a derogatory function upon
it’.^81 Nagra’s poetry illustrates that for many twenty-fi rst century
poets writing in English, the complexities of cultural expression
necessitate not only an intricate linguistic texture, but a poetics that
can enact ventriloquism and critique.
SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
- While English is recognised as a global language, poets across
the world writing in English embrace variations in language use,
emphasising a plurality of Englishes as opposed to a monolithic
or totalising language. - The way that poets insist upon the particularity of language use
in their poetry is through the inclusion of dialects and idiolects
in their poetry. - The poetry of native cultures is often marked by the transforma-
tion of orality into text. - For poets such as Li-Young Lee, Gwyneth Lewis and Lorna
Dee Cervantes, bilingualism is key to their poetic practice, and
the texture of their poetry is informed by translation and inter-
lingual practices. - The deformation of established rules and grammatical practices
may also be thought of as an ideolectical poetics. - In the poetry of Tusiata Avia and Daljit Nagra the cross-
fertilization of different language use results in the exploration
of not only idiom, but also cultural expression.