Shailja
Patel’s Poetry in Migritude
Patel’s
performance poetry, Migritude, places
the performer in center stage in a way that lures and daunts while she
challenges the audience to think about the consequences of war and colonialism. In addition, the audience is drawn into her
politically infused narrative by empathizing with victims, whether they be:
women or boys who’ve been raped by soldiers, and the unfair treatment of ethnic
minorities who have endured hardship and injustice at the hands of the
colonizers, such as: the expulsion of Asians, who were mistreated. The performance poetry mentions the prevalent
Western perspective that we “mistake austerity, living without waste, for
deprivation” of Kenyans or Africans in general (Patel, page 34). This criticism and others like it paint
Western colonizers or Western people in general as possessing arrogant,
ignorant, and judgmental attitudes towards African culture, peoples, and
history in general.
In
her poetry, evidence of the success of her trans-nationality is present in her
abstract poem, “Opening” (Patel, page 101).
This poem seems to ask a simple question in the first stanza in a way
that breaks from old forms since it has a lot of enjambment (no rhyming or
meter like Donne’s poetry). The poem
seems to imply some kind of injustice has just occurred and now she wants that
person to “let go” of that joy (Patel, page 101).
what would it take
to let joy go
with the same wide arms
that drew it in?
The poem and other
poems she has in her collection contain fragments of moods or thoughts. The stanzas, in some of them, do not contain periods
or punctuations, no capitalization, and lots of short, 1-2 syllable words,
particularly in the aforementioned poem. This contradicts her other poems later in the
collection. Although “Opening” can be
confused as having blank verse, however, it is not as that would imply that it
is in iambic pentameter and she does not follow any meter. In the poem, she asks a profound question,
asking for something she could do in order for someone else to feel a lack of
joy. In terms of binary oppositions, she
in the second stanza seems to want affection and love, in contrast to the first
stanza, where she shares her yearning for human connection as a flute. In a
poem, “First Dates in Utopia,” Patel expresses herself in a way she would not normally
express in day-to-day life (Patel, page 117).
Although, she thinks of poetry as a means of preparing for that moment
when one can’t think of something to say that would otherwise go amiss, causing
regret and despair later on in life.
Let’s regard each
other
With eyes that smile
With faces that
engage,
Savor without urgency
The strangeness of
being human.
Release,” another
poem that shows complicated form and abstraction also shows some paranoia on
the part of the narrator, perhaps like a paranoid schizophrenic. The tone of the narrator seems withdrawn,
asking simple questions, such as: “Who’s watching now? No one”
(Patel, page 102). Perhaps out of
this angst, Patel’s last poem in the collection, “The Making,” portrays her
desire for societal change through the art of making, whatever that might be:
could be child rearing, writing essays, words, or poems, composing and
performing music, etc. (Patel, page 124).
And she uses words in a semi-violent way that jolts the reader, though
it is most pleasant to read because of the politically infused diction and tone
of the narrator.
