Context

The context of this poem is quite complicated, because it involves the poet's own history of moving between cultures - Caribbean and English - and the wider history of both those cultures.

Grace Nichols grew up in a small country village on the Atlantic coast of Guyana, in the Caribbean. Guyana used to be a British colony, so English literature has always been part of her personal background. In the 1970s, she moved to England, and now lives on the coast of Sussex.

In 1987, the southern coast of England was hit by what was known as The Great Storm. Hurricane-force winds are rarely experienced in England, and the effect on the landscape, particularly the trees, was devastating. In the Caribbean, on the other hand, hurricanes are a regular occurrence, and Grace Nichols had experienced them during her childhood.

Grace Nichols said about the 1987 hurricane:

It seemed as though the voices of the old gods were in the wind, within the Sussex wind. And, for the first time, I felt close to the English landscape in a way that I hadn't earlier. It was as if the Caribbean had come to England.

Grace Nichols