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Time and Place: places and identity
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Three modern poems explore how places shape who we are, especially for people who live between two places or cultures. These poems are still in copyright, so this lesson describes them in our own words. Use your anthology for the exact words you quote in the exam.
What each poem is about
Hurricane Hits England (Grace Nichols): based on the great storm of October 1987. A woman who has moved from the Caribbean to England hears the hurricane at night. At first it reminds her painfully of home; she calls on storm gods from Caribbean and African traditions. By the end she realises that the earth is one, so she can belong in both places.
Nothing's Changed (Tatamkhulu Afrika): the speaker returns to District Six in Cape Town, an area cleared of its non-white residents under apartheid. Apartheid laws have ended, but he finds an expensive restaurant behind a glass front, which no sign needs to say is for white diners, next to a cheap working man's cafe. His anger grows into a wish to smash the glass: nothing has really changed.
Themes and ideas
Belonging: Nichols ends in acceptance, Alvi in uncertainty, Afrika in exclusion and anger.
Place and memory: each speaker sees a place through memory or imagination: photographs, a storm, a ruined district.
Injustice: Afrika shows that racial division can continue after the law changes.
Context: Alvi was born in Pakistan to a Pakistani father and an English mother and came to England as a baby. Nichols was born in Guyana and moved to Britain in 1977. Afrika lived in South Africa; District Six was declared a white area in 1966 and its people were forcibly removed.
Good comparisons: Presents with Hurricane Hits England (two cultures), Nothing's Changed with London (a place showing injustice), Hurricane Hits England with Island Man (Caribbean memories in England).
Methods and how to write about them
Nichols: a shift from third person ('she') to first person ('I'), showing the speaker owning her experience; personification of the storm; rhetorical questions; a repeated final phrase about the earth being the earth that sounds like a chant of acceptance.
Afrika: first person, present tense; sensory imagery of stones, weeds and broken glass; the symbol of the glass that separates rich and poor; short, blunt sentences; the title repeated at the end.
To write well, track the speaker's journey: where does each poem start and end emotionally? Endings are a strong comparison point.
Plan a comparison: how do Alvi and Nichols present belonging to two places?
- Thesis: both speakers live between cultures; Nichols reaches peace, Alvi stays uncertain.
- Point 1 (ideas): Alvi's gifts make her feel awkward; Nichols's storm reconnects her to home.
- Point 2 (language): Alvi's colour imagery and the broken bangles; Nichols's personified storm and storm gods.
- Point 3 (structure): Alvi's scattered lines; Nichols's move from 'she' to 'I' and her chant-like ending.
- Judgement: Nichols turns displacement into belonging everywhere; Alvi accepts that she belongs fully to neither place.
Answer: Both speakers live between two cultures. Alvi's scattered free verse and fragile bangles show an identity that stays divided, while Nichols's shift into the first person and chant-like ending show a speaker who comes to feel at home in both worlds.
Alvi: Pakistani gifts, awkwardness, divided identity, scattered lines. Nichols: the 1987 storm, Caribbean gods, from 'she' to 'I', one earth. Afrika: District Six after apartheid, the glass symbol, anger that nothing has changed.
The interactive lesson includes the diagrams for this topic.
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