SOURCE: A review of British Subjects, in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 4, Autumn, 1994, pp. 864-5.

In the following review, Salkey compares British Subjects to the verse of W. H. Auden and Phillip Larkin.

The primary thematic thrusts of Fred D'Aguiar's spirited verse [in British Subjects] support subjects that readily yield themselves up to satire and irony. Of course, this is not to say that he writes down to levels of sarcasm, cynicism, or ridicule. Indeed, he does the very opposite; he achieves peaks of exuberant phrase-making, punning, humor, paraphrase, and fancy.

In one of D'Aguiar's most ironically layered narrative poems, the persona, an authentic citizen of Britain and the Commonwealth, lands at Heathrow, approaches Customs, and gives himself over “to the usual inquisition”; but he discovers after handing over his passport “the stamp, British Citizen, not bold enough / for my liking and too much for theirs” (from “Home...