Mapping the Self: The Sense of Space, Place, Home, and Belonging In Contemporary Caribbean Canadian Poetry

Abstract

This thesis investigates the dual concepts of place as home and place within the canon for diasporic communities, immigrants, and minorities within Canada. This thesis argues that a new understanding of “home” is necessary as the immigrant, forced within an in-between place of “there” (the birth-country) and “here” (the host-country), does not experience “home” as a singular, rooted location. “Home” for the immigrant is a feeling of belonging that spans multiple places simultaneously. This investigation of politics through poetics is grounded in the belief that national literature reflects national identity. As the immigrant presence within Canada has heretofore been perceived as secondary to the national identity, and diasporic and immigrant literature as other-to the Canadian canon, this thesis purposes to re-imagine that national identity in a way that includes minority literature. I focus on the work of two widely known Caribbean Canadian poets: Cyril Dabydeen and Lorna Goodison.