Biography
Sujata Bhatt is an Indian poet and native speaker of Gujarati (the language native to the west Indian region of Gujarat) born on the 6th of May 1956 in Ahmedabad and brought up in Pune until her family immigrated to the United States in 1968. Now residing in Bremen, Germany with her daughter and husband, she now works as a freelance writer and translates works of Gujarat poetry into English. Recognised as a distinctive voice in contemporary poetry, Bhatt has won many prestigious awards for her work.
Bhatt describes her childhood in India as “the deepest layer of my identity”. Even though she has said that she feels an immense amount of pride and love towards her mother tongue and her culture, Bhatt mainly speaks and writes in English.
Bhatt describes her childhood in India as “the deepest layer of my identity”. Even though she has said that she feels an immense amount of pride and love towards her mother tongue and her culture, Bhatt mainly speaks and writes in English.
A Different History
A poem from her book 'Brunizem' published in 1986
Smilarities & Difference of the PoemsThe Similarities of the two poems are they both have similar ideas of the loss of culture and heritage but they also differ in ideas, as in Bhatt’s poem she emphasises on the good and bad of languages which is an impact of colonisation but in Noonuccal’s poem it just lists the negative aspects. The tones of the poem are quite different as well because in ‘A Different History’ tone changes throughout the stanzas from passionate to a more serious tone of mournfulness and regret. Though the poems are different all poems will have use some of the same techniques such as repetition.
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Context Reflected in the Poem's ConcernIt is important to know about Sujata Bhatt’s context in order to make sense of ‘A Different History’. Sujata Bhatt’s context is reflected in the poem in ‘A Different History’ she expresses her concern about the issues of colonisation and westernisation. When Bhatt was twelve years old she moved to the United States from Pune. She believes that due to this move a small part of her culture was forgotten or lost as she was raised in a different country – this lost is then reflected in ‘A Different History’.
Key Poetic Devices Used in the Poem to Convey the ThemeIn the poem ‘A Different History’, the poet Sujata Bhatt conveys the theme of the loss of culture and language through the use of repetition, rhetorical questions and symbols.
In the first stanza the repetition of the word ‘book’ is used to show the importance of them, as books contain writing that provides information, ideas and can tell us about our culture. The first stanza is used more as an introduction of the importance of culture and leads up to the disdain of losing knowledge in the second stanza. In the first few lines of the second stanza Bhatt asks us some rhetorical questions each one starting with ‘which language?’, these questions make you realise that it is not the languages at fault but the person using it. After these two questions Bhatt then asks us ‘And how does it happen’, but she does not use a question mark as the following lines of the stanza is the answer to that question. In the lines ‘After the… swooping out’, Bhatt uses the word ‘scythe’ as a symbol of language of the colonizers, and using a metaphor of harvesting and replacing crops to show how invaders replace the native languages. This shows the destruction of a language which is soon replaced with another and this goes on to the next generations as they too lose their culture and heritage. |