ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY (ENG4 C11) IV SEMESTER MA ENGLISH 2019 Admission onwards UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT School of Distance Education Calicut University- P.O, Malappuram - 673635, Kerala. 190013 School of Distance Education UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT School of Distance Education Study Material IV SEMESTER MA ENGLISH ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: (ENG4 C11) Prepared by: Smt. MEENU S, Guest Lecturer, Govt. College, Kottayam. Scrutinized by: Smt. PINKU BOUSALLY, Asst. Professor of English, Govt. College, Peringome, Payyannur. DISCLAIMER “The author shall be solely responsible for the content and views expressed in this book” English Literature in the 21st century 2 School of Distance Education CONTENTS POETRY : 5 DRAMA : 23 FICTION & PROSE : 33 English Literature in the 21st century 3 School of Distance Education English Literature in the 21st century 4 School of Distance Education A Vision by Simon Armitage Armitage's poems echo the poetic genius of modern British poets such as Philip Larkin and W. H Auden. They share the same philosophic point of view that nothing is certain.Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, a village in West Yorkshire, England. From 2015 to 2019, he served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, and in 2017 he was appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. He was named UK Poet Laureate in 2019. Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems (2020); Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019); TheUnaccompanied (2017); Paper Aeroplane: Selected Poems 1989–2014 (2014); Seeing Stars (2010); Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006); TheShout: Selected Poems (2005). Armitage has also published fiction, including the novels The White Stuff (2004) and Little Green Man (2001), and the memoir All Points North (1998). ‘A Vision’ is taken from Armitage’s collection called Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus Corduroy Kid. The title of the poem is “Vision” but more than a vision it is actually a “Remembering” or “Unfulfilled dreams”. The poem speaks off the contrast between our idealistic hopes and the perfect reality. The miniature display model of the projected town which the speaker of ‘A English Literature in the 21st century 5 School of Distance Education Vision’ recalls presents a perfect, but unrealistic, picture of urban life. The poem opens in an ambiguous note.” The future was a beautiful place”, the presentation of future in the past form makes the reader wonder about the poet’s ideas about the future. The vision the poet presents before us is grim and sleek. ‘Electric cars' ‘tubular steel' all defines modernity. The vision of the future the poet aims to achieve resembles to the model of a village that would have been on display in the Civic Hall. ‘Smoked glass' evokes an industrial feel. The narrative shifts to the people of this utopian future. The vision he imagines is utterly idealistic, a civilization unparalleled in history. The language of Armitage’s poem is frequently playing on this joint meaning of ‘vision’ as both ‘imaginary illusion’ and ‘optimistic idea of the future’. As The Times pointed out “Armitage speaks with an utter lack of sentimentality or pomposity of the transcendent mysteries that lie beyond the ordinary moment”. Water Gardens by Sean O' Brien Sean O' Brien is a British poet, critic, novelist, short fiction writer and a fellow of UK's Royal Society of Literature. He has written six collections of poetry: The Drowned Book (2007), which won the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes, Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976- 2001 (2002) and other works which include the book of English Literature in the 21st century 6 School of Distance Education essays The Deregulated Muse (1998),the verse plays The Birds (2002),Keepers of theFlame (2003) and a verse translation of Dante’s Inferno (2006). He is a central figure in the contemporary poetry world – he has won major prizes for each of his five poetry collections, including the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham award, the E.M. Forster Award and, twice, the Forward Prize for Best Collection. What marks him out as a large literary figure is energy; his emphatic critical intelligence combined with a willingness to take on a wide variety of projects . “Water gardens” belongs to his poetry collection The Drowned Book. The T.S Eliot prize panel called the collection “ fierce, funny and deeply melancholic”. The forward panel described the collection as “a sustained elegy for lost friends landscapes and decaying culture”. The opening poems are all about seas rivers water that takes the reader to the dark terrain. Water seems to work here as a borderline between the living and the dead. The current political and cultural scenario of Britain is satirized in the poem. The poet talks about mortality vendors and rotten smelling mansions. The city has been degraded and degenerated. Water in the lawn looks like a half buried mirror which reflects many faces that we have seen. On the bookshelf we have poets, but they have never been read. His poems often use simultaneously particular and imaginative places. Real places become vehicles for exploration. O' Brien has integrated a wider dimension into everyday experience. His political imagination emerges as multiple.The Drowned Book is more a book than it is a poetry English Literature in the 21st century 7 School of Distance Education collection. Many of the poems relate to water, and not only under water—rivers, boats, ports, lighthouses, water gardens, ferries, drains, fish, bayous and meres. Yangtze by Sarah Howe Sarah Howe was born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, and moved to England as a child. She studied English at Cambridge.Sarah was a Poetry Society Young Poet of the Year in 2000 . She won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2010. Her first collection, Loop of Jade was published by Chatto&Windus in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Loop of Jade crosses boundaries of time, place and space. It interrogates what it means to belong – to a race, a country, a family. Her poetry aesthetically striking, precisely painted often grapples with Cultural identity and representation. Her poetry is highly playful and inventive.Howe's poetry is marked by a deep fascination with the ways in which poetic imagery that enables human connection across geographical and cultural distance and across time. In both Sarah Howe's poetry and non fiction, Yangtze emerges as a major element. Yangtze is the concluding poem in Sarah Howe’s Loop of Jade, her TSEliot prize-winning poetry collection.Loop of Jade isHowe’s first collection, in part an account of the poet’s journey to Hong Kong and China to learn about her and her mother’s past. Howe gathers an extended commentary on her return visits to mainland China and English Literature in the 21st century 8 School of Distance Education Hong Kong, where she lived until she was just shy of eight years old. The poem goes with the flow of the river while accommodating the physicality of the journey. Loop of Jade crosses boundaries of time, place and space. It interrogates what it means to belong to a race, a country, a family. ‘Yangtze’, might be read as an evocation. A moon glimmers uncertainly on water’s surfaces, a river flows, a diving bird vanishes into it, fishermen’s nets catch on something submerged, a bridge remains only “half-built”, a travelling boat merely “points” to its destination. References Lau, Lorraine. “Sarah Howe.” Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds, 2018, https://writersmakeworlds.com/sarah-howe/. Accessed 12 July 2021. English Literature in the 21st century 9 School of Distance Education Look We Have Coming to Dover by Daljit Nagra Born and raised in London, DaljitNagra is the first writer to receive the Forward Prize for both his first collection of poetry, in 2007, and for its title poem, Look, We Have Coming to Dover!, three years earlier. The tensions of duel heritage and between first and second generation immigrants are a key theme in his poems.DaljitNagra's second collection, Tipo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!, was inspired by an 18th-century automaton, published in 2011. It was shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize. His third book, Ramayana: A Retelling (2014), was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His latest collection is British Museum (2017). Look We Have Coming to Dover!’ take models from acknowledged classics of English-language poetry, using Seamus Heaney and Matthew Arnold as predecessors with varying relations to Britain. In his carefully crafted poetry, Nagra explores the challenging experiences of British-born Asians and through this presents a fresh portrait of modern Britain. His mixing of cultures and language is most obvious in his use of ‘Punglish’, a form of Indian English, influenced by the language of the Punjab. English Literature in the 21st century 10 School of Distance Education Look We Have Coming to Dover!’ by Daljit Nagratells of the arrival of immigrants to England and of their lives filled with hard work, fears, and dreams. The poem begins with the speaker describing the terrifying arrival into Dover. The water is dirty, the tourists lord over them and they fear being spotted. When they finally make it to shore they drive off quickly hoping to make their lives a brighter and a happier one. In spite of the hard work they have to put in, these people are joyful that they could start their lives over. The immigration crisis is one of the most challenging aspects of modern civilisation. People in search of a brighter future take risks that may cost them their lives.