Books
Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!
ISBN:9780571264902
Coming Soon! Published on:18.08.2011
Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!! takes its cue from the eighteenth-century automaton (a tiger savaging a British soldier) in a series of poems that begin at the throat of the old British Empire. In these vivid, real and sometimes surreal pieces, Daljit Nagra creates his own inimitable linguistic bhaji: where Shakespeare meets the Subcontinent in a range of forms from English sonnets to spectacular displays of ‘bollyverse’ or the tender love songs of the monsoon. The poems take their bearings from cornershops and classrooms, the strange, part-arcadian, part-hellish streets of ‘Londonstan’ and the places where the north of England collides with the Punjab: from Larkin to the ladoos in Raja t’Wonder Dog. Little escapes Nagra’s tigerish gaze: race relations, family feuds, cultural inheritance, religious bigotry, the British honours system, Rudyard Kipling, the blurring of Kevin Keegan with Kabbadi. Comic, hard-hitting, passionate, satirical, Daljit Nagra has written a book that is as powerfully thought-provoking as it is delightful.
Look We Have Coming To Dover
ISBN: 9780571238583
Published: 01 Feb, 2007
I was born in England to parents who are traditional Sikh Punjabis and my collection is about the Britain where Indians came and settled. The reader should expect to be immersed in a community that often feels its values are self-evident. My community and its individuals intend to show their true colours. I hope the reader will experience this Britain from the ‘inside’.
The collection is heavily populated with first generation characters and their second and third generation descendants. I have sought to explore their thoughts, feelings and cultural attitudes towards their own community, other ethnic communities and the indigenous white population. I am interested in the diversity that exists within this small community. There is no consistent attitude across the poems. I have simply tried to be responsive to the practical and emotional needs of the character(s) in each poem.
As it is my own community that I am generally exploring, committing to such a fixed form as the English language in a poem on a page of a book has inevitably led to some struggle and some overheating. This is manifest in the words, grammar, syntax and rhythms of many of the poems. I hope this friction adds a vibrancy and excitement in line with the characters and their situations.
The poems are intended to be comic as well as enlightening experiences for the reader. Often my characters either seek to be funny or are exposed for their comedic value. For me this is a heartfelt empathy for their circumstances.