First Neighbours By P.K.Page Poem summary, Post-Colonial Literature in English II: Canadian Literature, B.A English Literature, 3rd Year 6th Semester

Unit-3: Poetry

3.1.  First Neighbours By P.K.Page

The people I live among, unforgivingly

previous to me, grudging

the way I breathe their

property, the air,

speaking a twisted dialect to my differently

shaped ears

 

though I tried to adapt

(the girl in a red tattered

petticoat, who jeered at me for my burned bread

 

Go back where you came from

 

I tightened my lips; knew that England

was now unreachable, had sunk down into the sea

without ever teaching me about washtubs)

 

got used to being

a minor invalid, expected to make

inept remarks.

futile and spastic gestures

 

(asked the Indian

about the squat thing on a stick

drying by the fire:  ls that a toad?

Annoyed. he said No no,

deer liver, very good)

 

Finally I grew a chapped tarpaulin

skin; I negotiated the drizzle

of strange meaning, set it

down to just the latitude:

something to be endured

but not surprised by .

 

Inaccurate. The forest can still crick me:

one afternoon while I was drawing

birds. a malignant face

flickered over my shoulder;

the branches quivered.

 

Resolve : to be both tentative and hard to startle

(though clumsiness and

fright are inevitable)

 

in this area where my damaged

knowing of the language means

prediction is forever impossible.

About Author: 

            Patricia Kathleen Page (November 23, 1916 - January 14, 2010) was a Canadian poet. K. Page (Mrs. W.A. Irwin) was born in England and brought up on the Canadian prairies. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including three books for children. She was also known as a visual artist, who exhibited her work as P.K. Irwin at a number of venues in and out of Canada. Her works are in permanent collections of National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario.

P.K. Page is the author of The Sun and the Moon (novel) 1944, pseud. Judith Cape; As Ten as Twenty (poetry) 1946; The Metal and the Flower (poetry) 1954; To Say the Least (anthology of short poems) 1979; Evening Dance of the Grey Flies (poems and a short story) 1981; The Glass Air (poetry, essays and drawings) 1985; A Flask of Sea Water (fairy story) 1989; The Travelling Musicians (children's book) 1991; Hologram - A Book of Glosas (poems) 1994; The Hidden Room -Collected Poems 1997.

Among other honours, she has won the Governor General's Award for poetry for The Metal and the Flower (1954).

Summary:

This poem was written by P.K. PAGE . She was acknowledged as the best Canadian poet and also fellow of Royal Society of Canada. Her homeland is England and so her dialect is very from that of a people of Canada.

In the poem the First Neighbours, the speaker puts down the cultural encounters she/he was forced to face and compelled to adapt. she expresses her feeling that all the human are equal and there is no difference in them, but the people of Canada feels that she is different with the shape of her ear. she says that the girl jeered at her for burned bread. The homeland is always secure comparing to the other nation.

The speaker is caught in an ambiguous situation at last and is in a dilemma: whether to resume to the native condition or surrender to the culture and unpredictable conditions. All the experiences suggest to the speaker that “Go back, where you came from.”

        She says that she has become a minor and invalid. Her remarks are not worthy. Her gestures are silly of sick. She has become a trivial being in the views of her neighbours. the next stanza speaks about her mental state. And she says that finally she has become hardened like a chapped tarpaulin. She started to negotiate whatever she uttered is of strange meanings to others and Vice versa. She wants to connect herself with the others. She brought herself to the level to get connected with them.

In the next stanza, she is exploring mindscape through landscape, she says that nothing is steady everything inaccurate. Here, the forest is compared to the inner mind. she wants to be connected with them she gets scared and then she says that clumsiness and fright are inevitable.

Finally she says that prediction is forever impossible. We cannot predict anything. Thus she concludes her poem.

Theme:

            The immigrants in Canada had to experience the crisis of rootlessness and search for identity but they had deep down in their hearts the unforgettable memories of and affinities with the culture of their native country and an intense desire to cultivate that cultural ethos in their adopted country.         

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