Context - Look We Have Coming to Dover!

• The poem 'Look We Have Coming to Dover' was written by Daljit Nagra
• 'Look We Have Coming to Dover!' is the title poem is from British poet Daljit Nagra's award-winning 2007 debut collection - Nagra's book won widespread acclaim for its inventive wordplay, its wit, and its ability to tackle complex subjects like Britishness, immigration, and identity
• Many of the poems in this collection draw on Nagra's own background - Though he himself was born in England, his parents immigrated to Britain from India in the 1950s, and poems like "Singh Song!" explore cross-sections of British and Indian identity
• Daljit Nagra wrote this poem when Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the UK; his government was known (perhaps not altogether justifiably) as friendly to immigrants
• Immigration was and remains a much-contested issue in England, and it's one with a long and complex history - In truth, England - and the UK more generally—is a country produced by the forces of immigration (and, in its earlier history, invasion)
• The poem's dazzling display of linguistic invention testifies to the fact that English is a particularly wild and complex language, the product of multiple peoples and eras: the Romans, the Normans, the Anglo-Saxons, post-war emigrants from the Commonwealth, and so on
• English as an evolving language also reflects an evolving population, shaped and reshaped by invasions and large-scale immigrations across thousands of years - Any attempt to precisely define Englishness (especially in an exclusionary way) usually falls apart pretty quickly
• Dover has always been at the forefront (or shore-front) of the country's changes, which is why Matthew Arnold set his poem on its cliffs, and why Daljit Nagra does the same
• The strange, sparky English of Nagra's poem suggests that a close-minded, hostile view of immigrants fails to acknowledge the way that immigration has always shaped and reshaped the English language - and England itself
• Anti-immigration rhetoric, often suggests that an influx of new immigrants can erode a country's given culture or way of life. Nagra's poem reverses that perspective, with a speaker who looks towards England, not away from it, presenting an optimistic (if perhaps ironic) take on the country's future