MONIZA ALVI AS A DIASPORA POET

Abstract

‘Diaspora’ refers to the dispersion of people from their homeland. It is a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic scale. Diaspora Literature can be called works were written by authors who live outside native land. Diaspora writers are often preoccupied with the elements of nostalgia as they seek to locate themselves in the new culture. At the core of the concept of Diaspora lays the image of home. Home is a powerful notion in the study of Diaspora. Here, I have presented my study of the notion of Homeland in Diaspora and its elements. For that, I have taken poems of Moniza Alvi from her anthology “Split World: Poems (1990- 2005)”. Moniza Alvi is a Pakistani-British poet and writer. She was born in Pakistan and grew up in England. In some of her poems, she drew the image of Homeland, which has glimpses of nostalgia. The split world includes poems of five collections. Here, I have examined how Homeland reflects in Alvi’s poems and how she reconstructs home through poetry. Further, my conclusion is that the identity of Homeland has held onto those people living in host land and it reflects in their works.