Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Please write a 300-word paragraph about the poem below. Remember to focus on both content and form (literary elements). Since we discussed Grace Nichol’s biography in class, there is no need to bring it up again. You should include critical views of specific aspects of the poem or the poet (no more than two). You may use your notes from class. You will be graded on your use of literary terms; eliciting certain words and phrases from the poem and explaining them; language, grammar and spelling. Please do not copy from the internet, otherwise you will lose marks. Remember to cite all borrowed material, even if it’s not a direct quotation.  



How does Grace Nichols use the personal lyric to engage with questions of identity, gender, and race in “Wherever I Hang”?

“Wherever I Hang” 



I leave me people, me land, me home

For reasons I not too sure

I forsake de sun

And de humming -bird splendour

Had big rats in de floorboard

So I pick up me new -world -self

And come to this place call England

At first I feeling like I in a dream –

De misty greyness

I touching the walls to see if they real

They solid to de seam

And de people pouring from de underground system

Like beans

And when I look up to de sky

I see Lord Nelson high – too high to lie



And is so I sending home photos of myself

Among de pigeons and de snow

And is so I warding off de cold

And is so, little by little

I begin to change my calypso ways

Never visiting nobody

Before giving them clear warning

And waiting me turn in queue

Now, after all this time

I get accustom to de English life

But I still miss back -home side

To tell you de truth

I don’t know really where I belaang



Yes, divided to de ocean

Divided to the bone



Wherever I hang me knickers – that’s my home.