Chickens in Chinatown; Madame Sasoo goes bathing; Boy and bicycle in metamorphosis; Visions of the jet-lagged

Location: 'Chickens in Chinatown' New Writing 12, Ed Adebayo, Morrison, Rogers, Picador/British Council, 2003, pp142-143, ISBN 0-330-48598-9 ;'Madame Sasoo Goes Bathing' The Guardian 20th September 2003, p.37; 'Boy and Bicycle in Metamorphosis'; Poetry London, Summer 2003, pp 7-8, ISSN1479-2591; 'Visions of the Jet-lagged', Poetry London, Autumn 2004, pp19, ISSN1479-2591.
These poems celebrate and explore the foreignness and particularly the optical effects of being on the other side of the equator. Their physical context is the island of Mauritius. They take an individual moment and transform it: the ageing Indian matriarch swimming fully clothed in the Indian Ocean; the small boy transformed into an insect in the act of cycling his bicycle; the distorting effects of jet lag when passing from the North into the Southern hemisphere; the chicken seller in Chinatown—all these poems attempt the 'first touch' sensation of seeing something for the first time in a wholly new and unexplored world. They shift formally between a five beat to a twelve beat line as a means of matching form to the overwhelming effects of light and colour.