Foodscapes and Historio-cultural Variations in Pakistani Anglophone Poetry: A Comparative Study of Selected Poems of Shadab Zeest Hashmi and Imtiaz Dharker

Pakistani Anglophone poets Shadab Zeest Hashmi and Imtiaz Dharker embed foodscapes in their poems that manifest historio-cultural variations. This article presents the comparative study of selected poems of both of these diasporic poets and discusses how different foodscapes in their poems serve as historio-cultural signifiers that reflect cultural belonging, collective histories and experiences of migration. Hashmi’s poems traverse Al-Andulas and her food metaphors limn the aesthetics of convivencia, and melancholy over loss of cultural coexistence and erasure. In contrast Dharker inscribes food in South Asian and particularly Pakistani context to critique cultural and geographical displacement and fragmented identities. In this article, Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s poems from Baker of Tarifa (2010) and Dharker’s poems from I Speak for Devil (2003) and Postcards from God (1994) have been studied. The poems analyzed in this article represent historio-cultural variations, loss, nostalgia and contested identities. The study contends that Hashmi and Dharker employ food and cuisines as a strategy to reveal historio-cultural consciousness and evolving identities. Theoretically this argument is supported by Meredith E. Abarca’s Culinary Mestizaje: An Afro-Latino Collective Sensory Memory. This article also highlights that in Pakistani Anglophone poetry foodscapes serve as powerful discursive sites for revealing broader cultural histories and reconstruct belonging in globalized scenarios.