Why is identity so important to poets from a different culture essay

I believe that poets struggle to find their true identity as they might have an ongoing battle between two, as in ‘ search for my tongue’, it is about the poet who has ‘ two tongues in her mouth’ which symbolizes her two cultures, which displays her two identities.

In the poem, there is an ongoing battle between her ‘ mother tongue’ and her ‘ foreign tongue’ and how she cannot ‘ use them both together’ – showing that the two cultures would clash. To try and solve this, the poet tries to have one identity – one culture to fit into, but no matter how hard she tries and no matter how much she thinks she has moved on, ‘ I think I’ve forgotten’, it always ‘ grows back’. This is like in ‘ presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’, as in this poem, the poet also wants just the one identity as she rejects the presents she gets sent over from her other (Pakistani) culture, but she feels she couldn’t escape it either as she ‘ couldn’t rise up out of it’s fire’. In the poem, she calls herself ‘ half English’ which shows that she does not belong entirely to one culture, and therefore because she has a mix of two cultures, she has two identities. I have also found that in both poems, the poets have tried to escape their birth culture, and lose their original identity, as in ‘ search for my tongue’ the poet tries to ‘ spit out’ her ‘ mother tongue’ and live with the ‘ foreign tongue’ and in ‘ presents from my Aunt in Pakistan’, the poet ‘ recalls the story’ of sailing across to England, and how she left her original culture behind. Overall, I believe identity is important to poets from a different culture as they have never felt they have had a set identity, as even though they may try hard to escape one culture and form a single identity, their past will always be part of them and they will always have the constant battle between their two different cultures.