My father was born with a chutney tongue,
flavoured with the spices
of foregone generations
from an Indo-Caribbean kin.
His voice calls out to me
in island twang,
thick as callaloo inside a pot
and hot like mango achar.
Ay boy, how yuh doing?
When yuh go come see meh?
Across an ocean that divides
continents and cultures,
his words ring out like
the sizzle of a saucepan
with curry chicken,
taking me back
to a tropical land
and a past resurrected from sand.
I answer in earnest
but he doesn’t understand me,
when my own tongue is slathered
with cool mayonnaise
and Anglo in speech and sound.
Come nah, and I’ll cook for yuh,
dhalpuri with chana and aloo,
baigan choka and bitter kuchela
just de way yuh like it.
My father speaks to me in broken
English,
peppered with the rhythms
of culture and creed,
and I grieve with guilt
for betraying that language,
long buried
beneath the whitening snow.
Jeevan Bhagwat lives in Scarborough, Ontario. His poetry books include The Weight of Dreams and Luminescence (IN Publications, 2012; 2020).
Questions and Answers
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
Reading both traditional and contemporary poetry is essential to developing an appreciation and understanding of the craft. Poetry is a dynamic art form that evolves in style, tone, content and delivery over time. Poets need to be cognizant of this and have the courage to allow their own poetic vision and voice to evolve as well. By reading widely and availing themselves of community resources such as public libraries, poetry groups, and poetry slams, aspiring poets can develop a better understanding of how poetry is evolving in real time and be introduced to different cultural perspectives. This in turn may help to inform their own approaches to the craft.
What inspired or motivated you to write this poem?
I became fascinated with the interconnections between language, culture and identity. My family immigrated to Canada when I was a child so much of what I learned growing up was situated in a Canadian context. Like many immigrant families, the language and traditions reflective of my roots were kept alive by my parents and this helped me to better understand my own unique identity in a culturally pluralistic society. Poetry became the thread that enabled me to stitch together the disparate aspects of my past and present into a constituent whole from which I could better understand who I am and where I came from.