Daljit Nagra

Daljit Nagra’s verse novel based on the Ramayana will be published in 2013.

Poem: ‘This Be the Pukka Verse’

Daljit Nagra, 3 December 2009

Ah the Raj! Our mother-incarnateVictoria Imperatrix rules the sceptredsphere as she oversees legions of maiden‘fishing fleets’ breaking the wavesfor the love of a ‘heaven-born’ Etonian!Smoke from cheroots, fêtes on lawns,dances by moonlight at Alice in Wonderland –no the viceroy – the viceroy’s ball!Lock, stock and bobbing along onpalanquins to...

Poem: ‘A Ballad for Bopoluchi’

Daljit Nagra, 19 May 2011

Hauling pails from the village well the girls fell a-talking of weddings to come. Said one: My uncle will bring me chum-chums. Said a second: My uncle will bear me gildedsatin saris. The third, Bopoluchi, the fairest and fastest of the lot: My uncle, with casketsof jewels and fruits on a luscious white horsewill ride us to his palace to win me a suitor!

Poor Bopoluchi, the orphan, knew no...

Poem: ‘Rocky Woman Show Up!’

Daljit Nagra, 27 September 2012

On the outskirts of Mithila, a fabled city where they would soon rest having completed their sacrificial mission, the Sage took the boys past a neglected ashram. Rama, by the entrance, walked over a raised slab-stone. No sooner had he touched the stone         than dust was enlivened by his foot and before him the dust outlined itself into the image...

Cardigan Arrest: Poetry in Punglish

Robert Potts, 21 June 2007

At the end of David Dabydeen’s poem ‘Coolie Odyssey’ (1988), the poet, deracinated by education, distance and time from the dirt-poor ancestors he is elegising, considers his...

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