Key Quote
“"Dem tell me / Dem tell me / Wha dem want to tell me"”
John Agard · Checking Out Me History
Focus: “Dem”
The aggressive repetition of 'Dem tell me' establishes the poem's central conflict: a colonial education system that controls what histories are taught, suppressing Black and Caribbean narratives in favour of a white British curriculum.
Technique 1 — ANAPHORA & PHONETIC DIALECT
The anaphoric repetition of 'Dem tell me' — repeated throughout the poem — creates a drumbeat of accusation. 'Dem' (them) is unspecified but clearly refers to the colonial education system that controlled the curriculum. By using phoneticphonetic — Written as it sounds, reflecting actual pronunciation Caribbean dialect ('Dem', 'Wha', 'bandage up me eye') rather than Standard English, Agard reclaims his linguistic identity — the very thing the education system tried to suppress.
The dialect is a deliberate political choice: Standard English represents the dominant culture that controlled the narrative; Creole represents the suppressed voice. Agard refuses to translate — the reader must meet him on his linguistic terms. This is an act of cultural resistance: language becomes the battlefield where colonial power is both exercised and challenged.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
The poem charts a powerful progression from passive recipient of colonial education ('Dem tell me') to active agent of self-education ('But now I checking out me own history'). The shift from being told to telling — from object to subject — represents the speaker's intellectual emancipationintellectual emancipation — freedom of mind. By the end, the speaker has wrested control of their narrative from the colonial system.
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Technique 2 — DUAL STRUCTURE — CONTRASTING STANZAS
Agard alternates between two structural modes: regular stanzas in standard font listing British curriculum content (Guy Fawkes, 1066, Dick Whittington) delivered in a dismissive, nursery-rhyme rhythm, and italicised stanzas celebrating Black and Caribbean heroes (Toussaint L'Ouverture, Nanny de Maroon, Mary Seacole) in reverent, metaphor-rich language. The structural contrast enactsenacts — Performs or carries out; when form mirrors meaning the poem's argument: the two histories are treated completely differently.
British history is reduced to trivial rhymes ('De man who discover de balloon'), while Caribbean history receives powerful natural imagerynatural imagery — 'a healing star / among the wounded'. Agard inverts the expected hierarchy: the 'important' British history is presented as childish and insignificant, while the 'hidden' history is treated with beauty and gravitas. The form itself performs the revaluationrevaluation — The process of reassessing and reassigning the value or worth of something the poem demands.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
COLONIAL EDUCATION
Agard grew up in Guyana (then British Guiana), where the school curriculum was dictated by the British Empire. Caribbean children were taught British history, literature, and values while their own heritage was ignored or denigrated. This cultural erasureerasure — The act of removing or eliminating something from record or memory was a deliberate tool of colonial control: by replacing indigenous knowledge with British narratives, the empire maintained ideological dominance even after physical control ended.
BLACK BRITISH IDENTITY
Agard moved to Britain in 1977 and has spent decades challenging the invisibility of Black history in British education. The figures he celebrates — Toussaint L'OuvertureToussaint L'Ouverture — leader of the Haitian Revolution, Nanny de MaroonNanny de Maroon — Jamaican freedom fighter, Mary SeacoleMary Seacole — Jamaican-British nurse in the Crimean War — were systematically excluded from British curricula. Agard's poem is part of a broader movement to decolonisedecolonise — To remove or challenge the legacy and influence of colonialism education.
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WOW — COUNTER-NARRATIVE & EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE (Gayatri Spivak)
Agard's poem is a counter-narrativecounter-narrative — A story that challenges or opposes the dominant or official version of events — a story told from the margins that challenges the dominant version of history. Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term epistemic violenceepistemic violence — The suppression of knowledge systems belonging to marginalised groups to describe how colonial powers suppress the knowledge, histories, and voices of colonised peoples. The British curriculum Agard describes commits epistemic violence: it doesn't just ignore Caribbean history — it replaces it, making children believe there is only one history worth knowing. Agard's poem performs what Frantz Fanon called 'decolonisation of the mind': the process of recognising and rejecting the internalised beliefs imposed by colonial education. The final declaration — 'I carving out me identity' — uses the verb 'carving' to suggest that reclaiming history is not passive learning but active, physical, even violent labour. Identity is not given; it must be sculpted from the raw material of recovered memory.
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