The New Scots: Migration and Diaspora in Scottish South Asian Poetry

Fraser, Bashabi

Abstract

This chapter examines the poetry of Scottish South Asians, the "New Scots" who bring a whole history of displacement, dislocation and relocation with them, as their memory of the "elsewhere" enters their writing. Their voices are significant as they embody multicultural Scotland with postcolonial dialects that signify an encounter in the Third Space where they are affected by and affect the "host" community. This chapter will question whether the writing of "New Scots" has added more than just "colour" to Scottish Poetry, as it traces the recent migrant history and analyses the lives and "voices" of diasporic communities as evident in their poetry. The objective is to assess how the new "voices" have blended in, expanded and/or challenged the boundaries of what defines Scottish Poetry, and determine whether they form a "community" of poets distinguished by the complexity of their regional allegiances, both past and present.

• Acceptance Date: Sep 9, 1999
• Publication Date: 2016-05
• Deposit Date: May 30, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 214-234
• Book Title: Community in Modern Scottish Literature
• ISBN: 9789004317451
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004317451_013
• Keywords: South Asian poetry; New Scots; migration; diaspora; culture; identity; transnational; multicultural; global postcolonial; displacement; Third Space
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/10004