Daljit nagra biography sample
Daljit Nagra
Overview
Born in London to Sikh Punjabi immigrants, Daljit Nagra (1966– ) studied for a BA and MA in English at Royal Holloway, London. He cites William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience as being the work that awoke him to ‘the power of poetry’, which propelled him throughout school. However, he did not have the confidence to pursue writing until he was 30. Nagra draws influence from both his British and Punjabi identities in order to explore how they collide and coincide, particularly focusing on his own experience as a child of first-generation immigrants. Even so, he emphasizes that poets should not be reduced to their backgrounds.
[Nagra’s poems] do that rare thing in poetry of stretching language, making it do things it hasn’t done before. It’s multiculturalism at its most complex, individual and real.—Chitra Ramaswamy
Nagra’s acclaimed collection Look We Have Coming to Dover! (2007), won awards such as the Forward Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. In this work, he explores vastly different attitudes to culture and ethnicity within a small migrant community, achieved partly by merging two languages to create ‘Punglish’ in order to ‘marry two different cultures and two different languages’.
Nagra’s most recent work, British Museum (2017) is also a testament to this hybridity, as he injects the anthology with elements of British Sikh heritage through references to the BBC, Hadrian’s Wall, and British gurdwaras. As well as including more personal poems concerning his upbringing in a traditional community, Nagra’s political meditations in this work consider the idea of national identity in the wake of mass migration, the Arab Spring, and the threat of extremism on British soil. His other works include Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!! (2011) and Ramayana (2013), both of which were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Nagra teaches at Brunel University London, and he British poet (born 1966) Daljit NagraMBE FRSL (born 1966) is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! was published by Faber in 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK (especially Indian Sikhs), and often employ language that imitates the English spoken by Indian immigrants whose first language is Punjabi, which some have termed "Punglish". He was the first poet in residence at the BBC and has served as chair of the council of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a professor of creative writing at Brunel University London. Daljit Nagra, whose Sikh Punjabi parents came to Britain from India in the late 1950s, was born and grew up in Yiewsley, near London's Heathrow Airport. The family moved to Sheffield in 1982. In 1988, Nagra went to study for a BA and MA in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Tentatively beginning to write, he later attended poetry workshops, courses and tutorials, receiving feedback from poets including Pascale Petit, Moniza Alvi, John Stammers, Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay, and from 2002, being mentored by Stephen Knight. In 2003, Nagra won the Smith/Doorstop Books Pamphlet Competition, leading to the publication of his Oh MY Rub!, which was the Poetry Book Society's first PBS Pamphlet Choice. In 2004, he won the Forward Poetry Prize for best single poem for "Look We Have Coming to Dover!", a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We Have Come Through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach". His debut book-length collection, which takes the same title, was published in 2007, when it received extremely positive reviews and was featured on television and radio, including Newsnight Review.Look We Have Coming to Dove Biography It wasn’t until the age of 19 that I first picked up a book of poems. It was William Blake’s simple yet complex Songs of Innocence and Experience which awoke me to the power of poetry. It inspired me to study for A levels, including English Literature, at evening classes. In 1988 I moved to London to study for a BA and MA in English at Royal Holloway. Whilst there, I showed a poem of mine to one of my lecturers, Professor Martin Dodsworth, who was extremely positive. However I lacked the confidence to continue writing and didn’t start again until I was 30. When I began writing again I was boosted by a one-to-one session which I decided to book with the poet Ruth Padel. She advised me to develop my sense of technique by attending workshops and to read contemporary poetry. In addition, she explained how the publication process worked. A few months later, I booked another one-to-one feedback session via The Poetry Society with the poet Angela Dove. She encouraged me to develop my writing style and then to send my improved poems to poetry magazines. I became a regular visitor to the Poetry Library at the South Bank’s Festival Hall. Inspired by my two tutorials I started sending out poems to small magazines under a pseudonym, Khan Singh Kumar. I assumed that I wouldn’t be published so I just enjoyed writing under a highly improbable name. When I started being published in magazines I realised I needed to take my work more seriously, so I started to publish under my own name. About 18 months after first getting published in some magazines, I booked a one-to-one feedback session with Pascale Petit who helped me develop my editing skills. Her honest feedback helped me tighten up my lines, and to remove phrases and images that were precious to me but not right for the poem. As editor of Poetry London, Pascale was also the first big publisher to publish a poem of mine (an early version of Digging). I gave my fir Daljit Nagra
Early life and education
Poetry career
Daljit Nagra
I run just one ov my daddy's shops
[ . . . ]
but ven nobody in, I do di lock –
cos up di stairs is my newly bride
vee share in chapatti
vee share in di chutney
after vee hav made luv
like vee rowing through Putney
Nagra’s poems are lively hymns to the richness of everyday life. His dramatic monologues are awash with mishearings and linguistic confusions, with hybridising phrases like ‘Odour toilet’ (eau de toilette) and ‘cardigan arrest’ (cardiac arrest). Through these surreal new coinages we see contemporary Britain painted afresh. But behind the poems’ knockabout humour there is often an underlying sadness. As the narrator exclaims in ‘The Speaking of Bagwinder Singh Sagoo!’, “Oh my Rub, what is England happening to us?”
On the inspiration for his work, Nagra has said, “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’.”
Look We Have Coming to Dover! won the 2 Biography
My writing life