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Poem of the Week: ‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei’ by Daljit Nagra

16 September 2024

Our Poem of the Week is ‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei’ by Daljit Nagra, from British Museum, a book that asks profound questions of our ethics and responsibilities at a time of great challenge to our sense of national identity.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei That he should opulently inherit The goods and titles of the extinct. – ROBERT GRAVES, ‘A Country Mansion’ Who are we at root? To know this is to know our range, the cast of characters we’ve banked? Weren’t we once a plucky bunch in battle led by Drake and Nelson? Wherever we died turned Britain forever? An amphibious tribe who fished, however far we ventured, our rivers coursed within us to chant our poetic names roll on sweet Avon, sweet Ouse? The apple fell on Newton so we walk tall, stay tall for Brunel and Darwin? Who’d speak for our garden utopias? Not Clive of India, not Kitchener’s finger, but John Barleycorn, the Green Man. Weren’t we ruled by black emperors? Our first couple of Obama glamour, Septimius Severus and Julia? Who else to deepen us? Surely Julian of Norwich in her Albion of divine love? The Tolpuddle Martyrs? What heritage or broch or crop of skyline stone abounds us with murmurs of ancient wisdom? So much at root, what ramparts of fear have we built? Have we been severed from the world? Could we seek guidance from the Virgin Queen, the Lady of the Lamp, so we’re bold as Boudica, noble as Livingstone and Bevan?

 

 

Copyright © Daljit Nagra, 2017. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.

‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei’ by Dalijt Nagra is from British Museum.

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Daljit Nagra
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The third collection from one of the most distinctive voices in British poetry – now in paperback.