The inclusion of “invade” introduces the ongoing theme of words with negative connotations, but this one is particularly notable because of the direct link to hostile people entering another country. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. is the most acclaimed debut collection of poetry published in recent years, as well as one of the most relevant and accessible.

One can’t help but wonder how this initial impression of England contrasted with that the immigrants might’ve expected. I have had the honour of profiting from my good friend Daljit's teachings for a number of months now at my secondary school and would go so far as to say I am the finest student in the class, a muse if you will.

As such, this reference can be seen as pointing directly to the idea of immigration and the way that politics, media and society intertwine to react to it. Lines 21-25: “Imagine my love and I, / our sundry others, Blair’d in the cash / of our beeswax’d cars, our crash clothes, free, / we raise our charged glasses over unparasol’d tables / East, babbling our lingoes, flecked by the chalk of Britannia! Babbling” could be seen as an example of onomatopoeia, with Nagra playing with these words and phrases to continue the idea of multiple languages. Intriguingly, a reader today may find this line even more notable than in 2007 (the year in which the poem was published) due to former Prime Minister David Cameron’s description of migrants crossing the Mediterranean as a “swarm”.

Nagra, whose own parents came to England from the Punjab in the 1950s, draws on both English and Indian-English traditions to tell stories of alienation, assimilation, aspiration and love, from a stowaway’s first footprint on Dover Beach to the disenchantment of subsequent generations. The link to immigration would become particularly clear with the reference to “Dover” as this is a key point of entry to the UK from mainland Europe as this is at the narrowest stretch of the English Channel. The use of non English words is an intriguing way in which Nagra can be seen to be critical of anti-immigration ideas and sentiments, demonstrating how English has naturally evolved to incorporate words from other languages. It reads, “So various, so beautiful, so new…” There is nothing “beautiful” about the speaker’s description of the Dover shore in the first stanzas of the text.When looking at the poem as a whole the changes in line length become clearer, with each stanza progressing from short lines to long lines, before restarting the cycle for the next stanza. Borrowing Neil Bloodaxe Astley's words re poetry, this is poetry which exudes 'the fullest and most subtle flavour'. Nagra also dramatises an uneasy nation, as one idea of England is replaced by another — the latter, Nagra’s vision, is uglier, with hostility to immigrants and pollution.