 Hello and welcome to this video summarizing everything you need to know about Island Man, which is a poem by Grace Nichols that is featured in Edexcel's Belonging Anthology. Before we go into detail when it comes to analyzing the different stanzas within this poem, I think it's really important to begin by examining contextual factors that influenced both the poet herself, Grace Nichols, but of course also are melded and mixed into the poem itself. So as you can see behind me I've basically created a very brief mind map which highlights the key contextual factors that you should be aware of that influence both the poet Grace Nichols and of course what is written within the poem. The first important thing to bear in mind is Grace Nichols herself is Caribbean and of course she is a modern contemporary writer. That means she is still alive and her writing was written within the last decade or the last you know basically post 1900s okay so she's a contemporary writer. So Grace Nichols was born in Guyana which is a country within the Caribbean. She was born there in 1950 and she migrated and moved to live in the UK in 1977. Indeed a lot of her writing including the poem Island Man reflects this sense of belonging and also of course the sense of exclusion okay the one side of belonging is you know feeling like you're part of a place, feeling like you're part of a culture, you're accepted but of course the flip side of belonging is exclusion and alienation okay and that's obviously one of the major issues that immigrants face when they go to a new country. They don't necessarily feel like they can identify with the people that live there, they don't necessarily feel like they are accepted by the people that they live there nor do they feel like they perhaps identify with the lifestyle there and of course this is illustrated within Island Man but of course we can also assume that Grace Nichols herself faced these issues and these pressures as an immigrant herself when she moved to the UK in 1977. Now the poem itself Island Man was written in 1984 and as I've mentioned it reflects the immigrant experience of having a dual identity okay so we see this immigrant experience that's shown on the one hand the island man really remembers vividly and of course experiences vividly waking up by the beach in the Caribbean versus waking up in a very densely urban environment within London near the north circular which is a very very famous and a huge stretch of road that covers and runs on the outer ring of central London you know connecting all the different suburbs of London so of course this dual identity this British Caribbean side is explored within this poem. The other contextual factor to bear aware of when it comes to Grace Nichols herself is that her writing often combines the Creole language which is spoken in her native Guyana with standard English okay so a lot of her writing combines both of it together moreover her writing and her poems combine her experiences of living by the beach in the Caribbean okay of course she's from Guyana which is an island in the Caribbean as also it combines her making a living and living within the UK okay so also there's that element of also being an economic migrant so perhaps the country that she has come from and of course even within island man the country that he comes from this anonymous island man he makes a modest living as a fisherman hence this necessitates him leaving going to the UK in order to make a slightly better living and a better wage working within London but of course that affects the quality of his life. The final contextual factor is when it comes to Grace Nichols herself her writing does make use of a lot of Caribbean rhythms and cultures and you will also see this in the way the poem island man is laid out okay there's a certain interesting rhythmical pattern in the way it is laid out and this is used to reflect these Caribbean rhythms and cultures okay so now that we've examined and looked at really important contextual factors that affect this poem and you do need to discuss context in addition to discussing the poem if you're writing an essay about this let's now analyze this poem in depth so let's read through the poem island man island man morning an island man wakes up to the sound of blue surf in his head they're steady breaking and moving while seabirds and fishermen pushing out to sea the sun surfacing defiantly from the east of his small emerald island he always comes back groggily groggily comes back to sands of a gray metallic sword to surge of wheels to dull north circular raw muffling muffling his crumpled pillow waves island man heaves himself another London day so this poem evidently of course about a man who comes from an island presumably the Caribbean contrasts and just opposes his life when he used to live by the beach versus later on when he moves to London and lives in this urban landscape so now that we've read through this poem let's analyze it in depth bear in mind the title of this poem is interesting because it firstly makes us focus on the journey the path and trajectory of this particular anonymous island man so he comes from the islands presumably the Caribbean but also the fact that this man is left anonymous could reflect the wider immigrant experience it could reflect that his journey is symbolic of what lots and lots of different immigrants especially those who have come from beautiful beaches beautiful places that tend to be tourist resorts how difficult it must be for them to adjust to life in the city in terms of the poem structure hopefully you've noticed the way it's structured it's important to bear in mind that it's written in free verse to reflect a stream of consciousness okay this is a very typical style of Grace Nichols herself but also typical style of contemporary poets and what this does is it depicts what it's like to live on a tranquil Caribbean island before migrating to the hectic hustle and bustle of life in London and the stream of consciousness could almost reflect the typical stream of consciousness this island man might be thinking as he's kind of going through life in the first verse the first line morning is interesting so this one line minus sentence which is coupled with enjambement reflects how we usually greet each other in the morning we informally tend to say morning but also this is how nature greets the man on the island okay so it's creating this really beautiful image of the island and rather the sea greeting him in the morning then the reference and repetition to the title itself island man focuses our attention on this man's life okay so he's waking up in the ocean the sibilance of sound and surf so the s sound here depicts this calming sound which is waking him up okay so the ocean is really tranquil in the morning so there's this almost paradise that he lives on and this sound is really really calming then the mention of in his head is interesting because it's unclear here whether he can hear the sounds in his mind so he's maybe thinking about this as a memory or if he's actually right there by the beach okay so it's really unclear whether he can hear the sounds of his in his mind or if he's recollecting the sounds at a later period when he's no longer close at the beach so it's really deliberate and Grayson it calls deliberately leaves this unclear also the reference to how the surf is wombing so this is an interesting present continuous verb that's used because it creates a powerful image relating to the womb you know where the a child lives in the pregnant mother's belly and what this is showing is the island is this safe warm and peaceful place and the man is wrapped up in this feeling as he wakes up on this island okay so we're getting this image of the island being almost this place of paradise in the next verse we learn of the wild sea birds who are putting a who are near the fishermen putting out to sea and there's also the mention of sun and the semantic field of nature is used here so sea birds sea and sun and it shows how close this island man is to the ocean and how free and unfettered which means unrestricted his life is on the island also the mention of wild sea birds is interesting because always remember that birds tend to symbolize freedom therefore wild birds are literally the ultimate symbol of freedom from any constraints okay and what this is also showing is perhaps this island man is enjoying this ultimate feeling of freedom by the beach then the sun is defiantly surfacing so this adverb is interesting because it's showing that the fishermen especially so the fishermen who are also going defiantly from the east they are fighting back against the night just like also the sun is fighting against the night and everything that the darkness represents and so the sun as well as these fishermen are both daring to be hopeful warm and optimistic in the world that becomes dark very quickly also bear in mind that these guys perhaps live on maybe presumably a poorer island they live and work as fishermen and perhaps they're also pushing back against the darkness of poverty the darkness of this challenging life being also fishermen is a very exhausting job okay so also this adverb could emphasize this too then the reference to the small emerald island so these adjectives small and emerald are really interesting because they emphasize how small the island man's world is on the island however the island also holds this beauty okay that we usually talk about the small emeralds talking about jewelry okay so this is a rare beauty which is rare and difficult to find elsewhere then we learned that he always comes back now the reference to the word back is the first hint that maybe he goes away somewhere else however he's always dragged back to this island there's something that always compels him to come back and he does so groggily groggily now here we can see that maybe the island man is in a stupor so he's dragged from sleep to go make a living as a fisherman however he's later drawn abroad to make a living in the west and he still feels this really dragging groggy feeling and the next verse he comes back to the sand and again back is repeated again so repetition is used here to show how maybe he yearns to go back to the island so now he's away then we learned that he comes back to sand so here we can see that time moves however and we're taken to his other home so now we learned that the island man spits his time or maybe he's taken away from his primary home which is the island to a new home okay and this other home is in London away from the island away from the freedom symbolized by the island and on this new home there's a gray metallic source so this somewhat mimics the soaring of the sea and the wild sea birds however the adjectives gray metallic which belong to the manticfield of metal show is an urban landscape also these adjectives create a very ugly color which is a contrast to for instance the emerald color of the island also the reference to metallic wheels and nought circular all of these are emblems of an urban city okay so Nichols is using very urban imagery here again this is showing and contrasting the nature that the island man was surrounded by by the Caribbean in contrast now to this urban landscape which can be very ugly very dull very polluted too also remember that the north circular especially if you're not familiar with this road and you're not a london it's a reference to a huge road in london called the north circular road that connects all of its various suburbs okay so again this is another symbol of london a symbol of the busyness of london the traffic of london the hectic lifestyle of london in the following verse there's the reference to muffling muffling so now on about to pay a hair and repetition of the word muffling makes us realize that it's only when he's back in london that the smoothness of his thoughts of the island evaporate okay and they're replaced by this feeling of chaos or perfection and him being muffled the island man has crimple crumpled pillow waves and here the watery waves now take on a more material hardened quality so the adjectives crumpled pillow also suggest that his sleep is disturbed he's no longer peaceful and sleeping then we learned the island man heaves himself another london day so the word word heaves this verb hints that everything just is really heavy dirty i'm feeling in cold and the reference to london has connotations of living in a very busy hectic urban environment where the inhabitants are solely focused on survival so it's focused on survival maybe there's more money to be made in london but also there's a more lonely lifestyle a lifestyle that's far away from the beauty of nature so that's it when it comes to understanding this poem i hope you found this analysis useful and thank you so much for listening