Verse and versatility

factory and my mother at a hospital in the laundry department. I studied in the local school and didn’t read my first poem till I was in my late teens,” says Nagra, 41, who acknowledges William Blake for his first brush with poetry. Growing up in a predominantly white neighbourhood required Nagra and his elder brother to be smart, to escape getting attacked by local goons. Nagra, led a double life as the Indian son at home and the White boy outside, till he left to study English at the University of London at the age of 21.

While reading the works of Shakespeare and Milton, Nagra noticed how the course did not include a single brown-skinned or coloured author or poet. “I felt that there was nobody speaking for me. I began writing my verses more out of a need to tell the history of a people, and to tell it the way it happened” says Nagra.

Look We Have Coming To Dover! became the first ever collection of poems to be picked up by Britain’s most renowned poetry publishers, Faber and Faber, after the title poem won the Forward Prize for best individual poem in 2004. In his 31 poems, Nagra writes of the British-Punjabi experience in English, Punglish and Punjabi-accented English taking the reader along a riotous ride through themes dealing with racism, identity, alienation, poems that range from laugh-out-loud to quiet and sombre.

Once a closet poet, today Nagra performs his poetry for charity readings and schools, switching accents and mannerisms with ease.

(Nagra and Jeet Thayil to duel with words at Prithvi Theatre at 7 pm today.)