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The Caribbean Song, Wherever I Lay My Hat 'That's My Home'

1345 Words6 Pages

Caribbean poetry epitomizes rich poetry and is a new area of literature that came about in 1970s when the Caribbean countries were receiving independence from their colonizers. Caribbean poetry focuses on many dynamic themes such as spirituality, death, love (of course), the physical environment, politics and migration. What is interesting about the Caribbean in general is the cultural hybridity found. The natives of the area were Amerindians. The English, French, Spanish and Dutch all colonized different territories in the Caribbean. Furthermore, Africans from West Africa were taken there as slaves. All these interbred and formed the current people of the Caribbean. This created large ethnic and racial diversity with countries like Jamaica and Haiti …show more content…

The song was popular in the 80s, after Nichols had immigrated to England, and could have been a possible inspiration for her. The lyrics of the chorus of the song are : For I 'm the type of boy who is always on the roam/Wherever I lay my hat that 's my home/ I 'm telling you that 's my home and she might have felt that she relates to this and should give her own personal experience.
The poem is written as a soliloquy where the speaker is humbly reflecting upon her move to England. Although we are not directly told the gender of the speaker, I assume it is a female because of the ”knickers” she mentions in the last line. I also assume that the speaker is indeed Grace Nichols herself because there is a lot of evidence found in the poem to back this up. The poem is structured as a series of reflections on the voice’s move to England.
Writing in one stanza Nichols shows how her thoughts are all connected; there is no need to divide the poem into small sections as her thought process is clear and she is not drifting off into another topic. The topic she will and only talks about in the poem is her reaction to immigrating to

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