LIVING SPACE Flashcards
Poet, date, themes
Imtiaz Dharker
? (modern ish one sec tho gotta find my anthology)
Innocence, faith, corruption, hope, fragility, boldness
What is the poem about?
- Slums of Mumbai where people migrate from all over India in hopes of better life -> ironic?
- Celebrates existence of these slums and the miracle of how they stay standing and the ramshackle homes house people and lives
Living Space vs HOME
what is the impact / purpose / effect of this title?
Living space -> necessary/temporary area to live, can be anywhere, lack of roots in an area —————–> HOWEVER this living space is becoming their home?
Home -> with family, safety
Poet context?
Dharker my main gyaaalaalalall
1954 -
Scottish CALVINIST muslin -> EMILY DICKINSON LINK PS
Combines seemingly irreconcilable things in a lot of her poetry - ( ie being a calvinist and a muslim?) -> combining strength with slums (fragile?) / or combining a living space and a home
Other interpretations of dharkers other works
basically context again bc i didnt want one masssive flashcard
a highly visual, layered, or palimpsestic quality
PALIMPSESTIC = where original text has been erased and rewritten on
Black and white drawings with many lines and repeating patterns -> mundanity (in the black and white ) yet hidden detail and stories with the patterns
This mundanity in her poetry anchors potentially exotic and makes it less exciting / relatable –> ie with the slums makes the reader truly and really empathetic / intrigued
FORM AND STRUCTURE
One long thin stanza 22 lines
Each line varies in length perhaps echoing mismatched structure and different lengths of the slums
Poem appears as precarious as the structures it describes
Occasional rhyme acts like nails to hold the precarious structure together
Enjambment again leaning and precarious structure
Whole poem is metaphor for itself basics
Link to?
London = corruption of inner city inequality
The Prelude = Freedom of imagination to see bad as wonderful!
‘Just’ not enough
Emphatic adverb
Highlights unfinsihed settlement, make do of the people
Shakespearian contemplation of existance
‘Beams / Balance’
Alliterative enjambement highlights length of beams
Precarious
‘Nails clutch’
Personification of nails evokes their desperation, the fragility of the buildings about to fall apart
‘Towards the miraculous’
(+ previous long sentence echoing disbalenced structure)
Keatsian concept of negative capability
Soft sibilance echoes awe and wonder
Celebrates the power and life
Abstract noun highlights how the structure is a miracle/ amazing!
‘someone’
Ambiguous, unknown persona
Could be anyone who has moved into the slums
Evokes the sheer extent of people in these slums
‘Dared to place’
Dared! verb
it is an act of faith and bravery to begin a new life in these slums and hang their eggs in a wire basket
again cnogratulates the life
‘Thin walls of faith’
Fragility of everything in the slums!
Walls -> faith offers protection its the beliefs of the people that allow them to trhive
‘Slanted universe’
Adjective slanted, skewed world, new unkown unique, unlike the universes many readers know
Encourages reader to open their minds and comprehend life lived in another way
