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Summary. ‘ An Unknown Girl’ by Moniza Alvi speaks about an intense connection between an “unknown girl,” a bazaar, and Indian culture. The poem begins with the speaker sitting in a marketplace getting a henna tattoo from an “unknown girl,” this girl, like the speaker, is never named or described in greater detail.
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
"An Unknown Girl" was published in Alvi's second poetry collection, A Bowl of Warm Air, in 1996. Alvi herself was born in Pakistan (a few years after the 1947 Partition of India) but grew up in England, and the poem is informed by her own experience of being split between different ways of life. Read the full text of “An Unknown Girl”
Oct 7, 2023 · Line-by-Line Analysis of 'An Unknown Girl'. 'An Unknown Girl' is a 48-line poem that, visually, on the page, is 'all by itself' not knowing whether to move left or right, a continuous series of short lines that widen then narrow, a little like a stack of lines that could topple over at any time. This physical uncertainty is mirrored within the ...
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May 28, 2021 · Analysis of An Unknown Girl by Moniza Alvi. Moniza Alvi is a Pakistani-British poet and writer. Her poetry records the condition of growing up half-Pakistani and half-British in England, and the sense of conflict which arises as a result. An Unknown Girl focuses on personal identity and sense of belonging through the simple action of a girl ...
An unknown girl is hennaing my hand. As a little air catches. My shadow stitched kameez. A peacock spreads its lines. Across my palm. Colours leave the street. Float up in balloons. Dummies in ...
structure. ‘An Unknown Girl’ is written in free verse. It has minimal punctuation and it therefore feels as though an unplanned speech, or stream of consciousness. There are run-on lines throughout the entire poem. This creates the effect that the words ‘spoken’ are from the heart and emphasises the inner battle that the narrator feels.
An Unknown Girl line-by-line analysis Before close textual analysis, I often ask students to do an initial reading for the tone and literal reading. It is a fairly straightforward poem for students to understand on a surface level – a description of receiving a henna design in a busy night market.
