checking out me history

“dem tell me dem tell me”

• links to themes: OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY, IDENTITY

• This repetition at the onset of the poem creates a lasting accusatory tone throughout the poem

  • This is channelled by the poet's pent-up anger

  • The enjambment highlights how this marginalisation of his identity and culture is ongoing, a modern societal concern

    • Agard's lack of utilisation of punctuation reflects his rejection of the colonial convention of the restriction of literature and locution

    • The enjambment both in this quotation and throughout the rest of the poem demonstrates how Agard's emotions on this topic cannot be constrained  by the structure of the poem

• The poet's use of Guyanese Creole highlights how although he is oppressed, his true culture and identity bleed through

  • Agard is resisting the oppression of the traditional English language

“bandage up me eye […] blind me to me own identity”

• links to themes: OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY

• This quotation holds injury-like connotations, symbolising the poet's pain caused by his upbringing

• The violent metaphor of "blind me" links to the deliberate infliction of pain  by colonial powers on others

“de cow who jump over de moon”

• links to themes: OPPRESION AND INEQUALITY, IDENTITY

• This quotation links to a well-known English nursey rhyme, the lexical field of childhood and youth linking both to the poet's reclamation of their youth but also to his loss of childhood through oppression, linking to his wider inability to move on from his past

“but what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too”

• links to themes: OPPRESSION AND INEQAULITY, IDENTITY

• Agard utilises the connective "but" to demonstrates the intrinsic separation between white and black history

• This quotation details Agard's desperate search for his identity, its truth obscured by the oppression caused by colonial powers

“Mary Seacole […] a yellow sunrise”

• links to themes: IDENTITY

• Agard adeptly utilises light in referral to black historical figures, the visual imagery of this light connoting these figures as beacons of everlasting hope and a source of guidance for black communities

“I carving out me identity”

• links to themes: OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY, IDENTITY

• This quotation is a significant turning point in the poem, stamping finality to its ending

• Through this quotation, Agard wrests back his autonomy

• This is juxtaposed with the injury-like connotations at the beginning of the poem, demonstrating Agard's journey through this literature to resolution

• The present tense of "carving" further emphasises the fact that Agard's journey for acceptance and his fight against marginalisation is still ongoing

structure

• rhyming couplets

  • unites the distinct sections of the differing historical perspectives

  • eludes to Agard’s over-arching desire to end segregation utilising literary unification

• italics

  • used to highlight the disparity between the two warring accounts of history

  • dual structure endeavours to portray distinct separation in the UK’s taught hidden history

• lack of punctuation

  • punctuation is an English literary convention that aims to restrict structure

  • Agard is resisting colonialism and oppression

• creole patois

  • Agard utilises Caribbean dialect to resist English oppression

AO3

• written in 2005

• Agard was born in Guyana and received a British education due to the country being colonised by British power up until 1966

• ‘Checking Out Me History’ was inspired by a school textbook Agard read, which claimed that West Indian began with Columbus

  • this poem was published in the collection: ‘Half caste and other poems’ which placed a focal point on the intersection of culture and racial identity