Jackie Kay "In My Country"

"Walking by the waters down where an honest river shakes hands with the sea, a woman passed round me in a slow watchful circle, as if I were a superstition." I found the beginning of this poem promoting friendliness and virtue. Where the river is personified as honest and shaking hands with the sea, it was pleasant, and with the introduction of a word choice like superstition, there seemed to be emphasis on the play the woman has on the narrator, who is potentially a "superstition." My first impressions of this entire poem in relation to how we might want to interpret the setting is that, there is a comfort and friendliness in the turf. See, the place of people at the beach is being set for us as though there is a lot more meaning and value to the land than anything, however, it was a superstition and judgement, that caught my eye...

She later says other than a superstition, it was a look as though the narrator were "the worst dregs of her imagination." I believe this is supposed to pose the woman as a threat to the narrator: for if anyone would have any harsh negative judgement on a woman at the friendly beach. When she spoke, her words spliced into "bars of an old wheel," as if a ship were turning around and changing direction. "A segment of air." The pause for effect here seems to be entertaining the notion that there are people who might find us to be a curious subject as though there are reasons for us to be subject for any suspicions...

I believe that the writer was making a statement about people and their nature in owning the land to be theirs and familiar vs. worrisome or unfamiliar in any way... in which case a place where anyone could look at them as though there could be any reason to believe that there could be anything dreg about it... Because there was some mischief in this poem, I assessed that there was a regard for the cause of that woman to be curious of the nature of the narrator... because perhaps, it was that she was not from around those parts. See, if she had been from around there, she may have been able to determine that there were more reason to be friendly by an honest river who shakes hands with the sea, and not a place to be reckoning that there be any reason to believe there narrator to be anything other than friendly.

I believe that this poem speaks for the writer and her value of England in the late 20th century, because she speaks for the her country: it's her land: it's her country, and when she is asked in the very ending where it is that she is from, she replies: "Here... Here. These parts." Jackie Kay likely believes that her poem is still very representative of the sea and her passions for her true nature as an English woman to be determined as both friendly and virtuous... and anyone who should challenge that nature of her being... she should speak her mind to believe in her own powerful nature as a woman of England: a woman with power who was actually not a bad woman at all. It speaks for her country, and it speaks for her time.