Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Yes We Have Daljit Nagra Review!, 3 Feb 2007
Every so often you read a dread description about a writer, that they are representative of something more than themselves, that they bring to voice a collective experience and history of some kind. Usually this sort of thing is too heavy a burden to place on them; it contains an inherent pomposity, or is a sign of the mediocre talent that seeks to assert the relevance of their writing by claiming a higher social or collective significance. This kind of assignation of importance must be resisted because it can so easily elevate novelty over truly individual talent or original work. It can become a burden to a writer who is then assigned the task of `representing' their `people' for the benefit of others, rather than being true to the intimate engagement with their own artistry, the individual nuance and eye that makes a true writer.
So, I have spent days trying to stop myself from saying what I am about to say, but as much as I try to fight it, I have to speak the truth as I see it and declare that Daljit Nagra's debut collection represents in poetry an aesthetic and literary consummation of forty years of British-Indian, specifically British Punjabi-Sikh life, and represents the most creative and original engagement with the English language by any British Asian writer working today.
It had to come from a poet eventually, because poetry is where attention to language, rhythm, form, metaphor, simile and tempo is most concentrated and intense. Making the language new, by using it to describe and engage with new experience. So here it is then, a collection in which English and Punjabi (both language and sensibility) are not so much melting into each other as exciting one another in a flirtatious and playful mingling. This is an England never represented so originally before, the life of working class British Sikhs and Indians, their travails, sadness, guilty memories, joyful exuberance, subdued melancholy. The racket and sheer comedy of British Punjabi life is evoked so intimately in many of the poems, the poignancy of inter-generational pain and misunderstanding sketched perfectly, the deep blue of the immigrant and the children of immigrant's lives put in phrase and line. Paul Muldoon is the most obvious influence, but the patience, comedy, sense of humour, sensitivity, pathos, the miscegenation of language, the by turns stillness and exuberance of the poems is unique and Nagra's own brew.
They made me feel sad, made me giggle aloud (often within a few lines of a single poem), and excited me as you must be excited when a writer declares that he will take Matthew Arnold as inspiration and render his experience and, by gentle implication, the milieu and background from which he comes, into literature and life. That he will not be assimilated by language or tradition, but will embrace it, and memorialise his Punjabi-tinted memory and his private English landscape to make a space for himself and bring to word a world that was missing, invisible or misunderstood, until somehow it was brought into poetry, into art.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
is priceless baby, 7 Oct 2007
I picked up a copy of this in a bookshop and started flipping through it. Half an hour later I'd read it from cover to cover, to the annoyance of everyone in the bookshop, after which I felt obliged buy it. I even did so despite Faber's extortionate demand for nine quid. Should have waited and got it on Amazon.
Anyway, it's cracking stuff. Nagra's the real deal. I confess that most modern poetry makes my teeth ache with boredom because it's so earnest and glum and 'look-how-cleverly-I-put-that!'. Nagra's stuff isn't. It has verve and charm and soul, it's noisy and rude and very funny. He speaks -- or rather, his characters speak -- in a whole variety of voices: teenage Jaswinder who wishes she was black and chilled, querulous Kabba laying into his son's English teacher ('my boy, vil he tink ebry new/Barrett-home Muslim hav goat blood-party/barbeque?') and Singh who runs 'di worst Indian shop/ on di whole Indian road', and spends all his time upstairs with his 'newly bride'. Nagra has invented an amazing demotic here, a loud comic blend of Punjabi and English. Although many of the poems dwell on darker themes -- racism, oppression, arranged marriages -- the prevailing tone is one of exuberance and charm, as exemplified by the first and last poems of the collection.
I always enjoy poetry with a touch of fiction or drama about it -- the sort that introduces characters and makes them come alive, and tells stories or at least parts of stories, and keeps us entertained. Most of Nagra's poems do exactly that. I reckon he'd make a pretty good playwright too -- or stand-up comedian. Though I hope he keeps writing poetry and that lots of people buy it.
By the way, I'm not one of Nagra's pupils. Never heard of him before today. But I bet his classes are interesting.
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13 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sire Nagra: LEGEND, 19 Nov 2006
I have had the honour of profiting from my good friend Daljit's teachings for a number of months now at my secondary school and would go so far as to say I am the finest student in the class, a muse if you will.
Suffice to say the man knows his stuff but as amusing as studying Shakespeare can be (for novelty value if nothing else), it pales in comparison to Mr Nagra's work: the patron saint of English Literature (a BLUE CHIP subject). The number and range of devices used to describe a multitude of subjects, ranging from contemporary social issues and attitudes to romantic poetry to put Keats to shame, really is a wonder to behold and, though I was first impressed by his work being published by Faber and Faber, I now feel it is holding this man and his incredible poetry back.
I must wrap this up, but first a thank you to Sire Nagra, for teaching me the wonders of PEE. To summarise, if you enjoy poetry, genius, or PURE UNRIVALED QUALITY of any kind, buy this 21st century bible of poetry and bask in the teachings of The Nagrameister
Sincerly yours
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