Attribution by Jee Leong Koh
I speak with the forked tongue of colony.
Eavan Boland 'The Mother Tongue'
My grandfather said life was better under the British.
He was a man who begrudged his words but he did say this.
I was born after the British left
an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.
I was good in English.
I was the only one in class who knew “bedridden” does not mean lazy.
I was so good in English they sent me to England
where I proved my grandfather right
until I was almost sent down for plagiarism I knew was wrong
and did not know was wrong, because where I came from everyone plagiarized.
I learned to attribute everything I wrote.
It is not easy.
Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote.
Sometimes I think I wrote the words I wrote with such delight.
Often the words I write have confusing beginnings
and none can tell what belongs to the British, my grandfather or me.
While in exile in Paris in 1929, Nigoghos Sarafian, one of the very few modernist Armenian poets of the twentieth century, wrote: 'We can retain our Armenian essence intact even if we write in foreign languages and on non-Armenian subjects. It is a matter of finding a universal form free from romanticism. We Armenians must exploit to the full our dispersion, our exile'. This was only 14 years after the Armenian Genocide, so to make such a bold statement was mostly anathema among Armenian intellectuals and artists. Collective trauma is usually followed by a strong desire to refortify and assert cultural and national traditions and values. And one of the places where this groping-in-the-dark plays out is in language. This is certainly also true in the effect British colonialism has had on various peoples. The dominant or host language either becomes an enclosure or a tool for empowerment, or perhaps something in between. 'Attribution', by Jee Leong Koh, attempts to reconcile this tenuousness, when one is culturally both inside and outside English, grappling with its seductive, sometimes contradictory powers.
Right from the beginning, by way of the poem's title and the quote by Eavan Boland ('I speak with the forked tongue of colony'), Koh makes clear that the poem is more a question than answer. Yet the poem's diction and form counteract this implied conflict. Written in loose-metered couplets with the majority of lines end stopped, the poem exudes a directness and overall lack of heightened imagery. Consequently, one is pulled into the language itself in a starker fashion. 'I was good in English. / I was the only one in class who knew 'bedridden' does not mean lazy.' The repetition here, as well as the schoolboy-like assertion, hints at the potential for stuckness within cultural hybridity. The speaker is both confident and insecure, wanting to point out his English skills when a child, but perhaps aware that this also reveals a desire to assert his place within the host culture.
It is of no little importance that the one metaphor in the poem is the English alphabet itself. 'I was born after the British left / an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.' The alphabet is both a remnant but also the future place of identity-making. And the grandfather, rather than resisting the colonial imposition, claims a preference for it, though begrudgingly. The speaker's later plagiarism highlights this quality of being uncertain about the 'ownership' of English. 'Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote.' Ultimately, 'Attribution' is a poem about loss. Yet its matter-of-fact rhythms and ambiguous ending reveal an empowered acceptance of the diasporic condition. 'Often the words I write have confusing beginnings / and none can tell what belongs to the British, my grandfather or me.' Sometimes confusion itself is a means to self-realization.
I speak with the forked tongue of colony.
Eavan Boland 'The Mother Tongue'
My grandfather said life was better under the British.
He was a man who begrudged his words but he did say this.
I was born after the British left
an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.
I was good in English.
I was the only one in class who knew “bedridden” does not mean lazy.
I was so good in English they sent me to England
where I proved my grandfather right
until I was almost sent down for plagiarism I knew was wrong
and did not know was wrong, because where I came from everyone plagiarized.
I learned to attribute everything I wrote.
It is not easy.
Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote.
Sometimes I think I wrote the words I wrote with such delight.
Often the words I write have confusing beginnings
and none can tell what belongs to the British, my grandfather or me.
from New Poetries V © Jee Leong Koh
While in exile in Paris in 1929, Nigoghos Sarafian, one of the very few modernist Armenian poets of the twentieth century, wrote: 'We can retain our Armenian essence intact even if we write in foreign languages and on non-Armenian subjects. It is a matter of finding a universal form free from romanticism. We Armenians must exploit to the full our dispersion, our exile'. This was only 14 years after the Armenian Genocide, so to make such a bold statement was mostly anathema among Armenian intellectuals and artists. Collective trauma is usually followed by a strong desire to refortify and assert cultural and national traditions and values. And one of the places where this groping-in-the-dark plays out is in language. This is certainly also true in the effect British colonialism has had on various peoples. The dominant or host language either becomes an enclosure or a tool for empowerment, or perhaps something in between. 'Attribution', by Jee Leong Koh, attempts to reconcile this tenuousness, when one is culturally both inside and outside English, grappling with its seductive, sometimes contradictory powers.
Right from the beginning, by way of the poem's title and the quote by Eavan Boland ('I speak with the forked tongue of colony'), Koh makes clear that the poem is more a question than answer. Yet the poem's diction and form counteract this implied conflict. Written in loose-metered couplets with the majority of lines end stopped, the poem exudes a directness and overall lack of heightened imagery. Consequently, one is pulled into the language itself in a starker fashion. 'I was good in English. / I was the only one in class who knew 'bedridden' does not mean lazy.' The repetition here, as well as the schoolboy-like assertion, hints at the potential for stuckness within cultural hybridity. The speaker is both confident and insecure, wanting to point out his English skills when a child, but perhaps aware that this also reveals a desire to assert his place within the host culture.
It is of no little importance that the one metaphor in the poem is the English alphabet itself. 'I was born after the British left / an alphabet in my house, the same book they left in school.' The alphabet is both a remnant but also the future place of identity-making. And the grandfather, rather than resisting the colonial imposition, claims a preference for it, though begrudgingly. The speaker's later plagiarism highlights this quality of being uncertain about the 'ownership' of English. 'Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote.' Ultimately, 'Attribution' is a poem about loss. Yet its matter-of-fact rhythms and ambiguous ending reveal an empowered acceptance of the diasporic condition. 'Often the words I write have confusing beginnings / and none can tell what belongs to the British, my grandfather or me.' Sometimes confusion itself is a means to self-realization.
'Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think I wrote the words I wrote with such delight.'
Brilliant