Hybridity, Identity, and Belonging in the Poetry of Moniza Alvi and Choman Hardi

James Davey is a researcher of place and identity in modern and contemporary poetry. He holds BA and MA degrees from Bath Spa University, where he also taught Creative Writing for several years, and earned his PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he currently teaches research skills at the University of the West of England, International College.

• AcknowledgementsCredits IntroductionPart 1: The foundations of ‘Home’Chapter 1: Different Notions of Home(1.1) Conceptualising Home(1.2) Postcolonial PerspectivesChapter 2: ‘Home’ in theory(2.1) The Experiential(2.2) The Imaginative(2.3) Homi Bhabha, Hybridity, and Third Space Theory(2.4) Gendered Perspectives(2.5) The Loss of HomePart 2: Reading ‘Home’Chapter 3: Contemporary British Poetry(3.1) ‘Home-based’ poetry in English(3.2) Post-colonial PoetriesPart 3: Writing ‘Home’Chapter 4: Hidden Worlds: Moniza Alvi(4.1) The Poetics of Uncertainty(4.2) The Embodied Identity(4.3) The Mythopoetic(4.4) Map MakingChapter 5: My English Years: Choman Hardi(5.1) Memory and Exile(5.2) My English Years(5.3) The Poetics of Witness(5.4) Considering the WomenConclusionsIndex

In this engaging and timely book, poet and critic James Davey brings an exceptionally rich set of interpretations to the complex and multidimensional subject of 'home'.– Professor Jean Sprackland, Professor of Creative Writing, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKHybridity, Identity, and Belonging in the Poetry of Moniza Alvi and Choman Hardi: Writing Home is a timely and in-depth poetical and intellectual investigation into Alvi’s and Hardi’s poetry and the ways in which they imagine home and belonging. The book’s perceptive and thoughtful exploration of migration and diaspora in poetry offers original and new insights into the complex relationship between poetry and the experience of displacement as part of the shifting meaning of home and belonging. In a world where the division between ‘us and them’ is becoming ever more polarised, Davey’s insightful examination of poetic representations of home offers a space for envisaging new encounters in language and in life.– Dr Angelica Michelis, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK