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Grade 9 Notes: Name Journeys
Raman Mundair · A Worlds and Lives poem on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — not on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (4ET1) · Name Journeys
Name Journeys is a poem about a woman's name, and about everything a name carries — family, faith, language, a country left behind. It is written in couplets, in a loose version of the ghazal, a form of poetry much loved in South Asia. In its first part the speaker measures her life against figures from the great Hindu epics: the hero Rama, exiled to the wilderness; a trial by fire; a faithful wife she has not been given; a silk that would wrap Draupadi's blush. In its second part she follows her own journey from India to England. Her first language, Punjabi, is knocked loose and falls on ground where nothing will grow; she has to labour to speak the English of Manchester; her name becomes something English mouths trip over, its music turned to a clumsy rhyme and its rhythm dulled. The poem ends with an English echo chamber that seems to have no history and no memory. Revise it as a poem about identity, language and the cost of migration. The poem is in copyright and no quotation from it could be checked against the poet's or publisher's own text, so these notes quote nothing: every moment is described closely enough to find on the page. If the poem is printed on your paper, quote it from there.
Build your reading of Name Journeys, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this page carries all three.
What is this exam testing?
Name Journeys is examined on one course Incandio supports: AQA GCSE English Literature (8702), as one of the fifteen poems in the Worlds and Lives cluster on Paper 2. You meet it in one of two ways — printed on the paper as the named poem, or remembered as the poem you choose to set beside a different named poem. Both routes reward the same three things: an argument of your own (AO1), close attention to how the poem's language, form and structure make that argument (AO2), and context that genuinely changes how a line reads (AO3 — on this course AO3 means context, not comparison). For Name Journeys that means a view about what the poem does with a name and the identity it carries, a set of precisely described moments, and one or two pieces of context — the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the ghazal tradition, and the experience of children who migrated from South Asia to England — welded to a moment.
AQA GCSE English Literature (8702) — Paper 2, Section B: Poetry (Worlds and Lives)
Section B asks one comparative question on the cluster. One poem is named and printed; you choose a second from the same cluster and write about it from memory. There is no separate mark for comparing: comparison is the task itself, credited through the quality of your argument and your analysis. Accuracy of spelling and grammar (AO4) is not credited on this question, though clear writing still carries the argument. On Pearson Edexcel International GCSE the same AO codes mean different things; never carry them across.
AO1 · A personal, critical response, supported by references
What the examiner wants: An argument about what the poem does with identity, not a list of its references. The strongest answers ask why the poem begins in myth and ends in a life without history: is the journey a loss, a hardening, or a protest?
Scoring highly: Range across the whole poem: the comparisons with Rama, the trial by fire, the absent faithful partner, the silk of Draupadi; the name as a journey; the woven life; the lost Punjabi; the hard-won Manchester English; the name English people stumble over; the final emptiness. Keep a second poem in every paragraph.
Top band vs the band below: Top answers read the poem's two halves against each other: noticing that the poem mentions Hindu figures is an observation; arguing that a speaker who can place her life inside an epic tradition of exile, trial and protection then arrives in a country that cannot even pronounce her name — so that the richest identity meets the narrowest welcome — is a concept.
The common mistake: Treating the Hindu references as decoration, or ignoring them, and so missing the depth of the identity the poem says England flattens.
In your essay: Open with a comparative thesis that names both poems and the difference that matters, then build three or four paragraphs that each hold both poems, and finish on what the pairing shows that neither poem shows alone.
AO2 · Language, form and structure, with subject terminology
What the examiner wants: Analysis of Mundair's methods: allusion to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata; the extended metaphor of the name as a journey; imagery of weaving and cloth; the soil metaphor for lost language; sound imagery for mispronunciation; couplets borrowed from the ghazal, loosened into free verse with enjambment.
Scoring highly: Read the cloth imagery: silk, saris and woven tapestries run through the poem, so identity is presented as something woven from many threads — and something that can be stripped, or protected.
Top band vs the band below: The best answers read the form as part of the argument: a ghazal is a South Asian form, and by writing about life in England in a loosened ghazal the poem carries its heritage in its very shape — the culture England dulls survives in the form.
The common mistake: Saying the poem uses a ghazal without saying what choosing a South Asian form does to a poem about losing a South Asian identity.
In your essay: In each paragraph name the method, pin down the words or moment doing the work, say what it does to a reader, then say what the partner poem does differently. Make at least one point about form or structure.
AO3 · Context — the relationship between the poem and the world it comes from
What the examiner wants: How the poem's world shapes it: the Ramayana (Rama's exile, Sita's trial by fire) and the Mahabharata (the attempt to strip Draupadi, foiled by endless cloth); the ghazal, a form of couplets often about longing and separation; and the experience of children who moved from India to England and had to learn a new language and accent.
Scoring highly: One clause at a time: because in the Mahabharata Draupadi is protected by a sari that never ends when men try to strip her, the image of silk without end presents the speaker's faith and heritage as a covering that keeps her safe.
Top band vs the band below: Context that generates a reading: the ghazal traditionally sings of longing and separation, so a migrant's poem about a name torn from its language becomes, through its form, a lament for separation from home.
The common mistake: Paragraphs retelling the Ramayana that never touch a moment in the poem.
In your essay: Two or three contextual clauses across the essay, each welded to a moment in a poem and each changing what that moment means. Never a paragraph of background on its own.
Avoid. Skipping the epic figures because they are unfamiliar. They are the measure of what the speaker brings to England, and of what England fails to see.
Examiner insight. A strong comparative opening names a method: both Mundair and Liz Berry write about a voice that a society tried to silence, but Mundair's speaker loses her first language and her name's music on the way to England, while Berry's speaker wants to break open the box where a relative's accent was hidden.
If you choose this as your partner poem, carry its shape: epic comparisons — exile, trial, a missing partner, silk around Draupadi's blush; the name as a journey; the lost Punjabi and the laboured English; the name English mouths trip over; an English echo chamber without history or memory.
The speaker and the figures
The speaker
A woman whose name carries an epic heritage, and who finds it stumbled over in England
The speaker tells the story of her life through her name. She begins by placing herself among figures from the Hindu epics. Like the hero Rama she has known the wilderness of exile; she has been humbled through a trial by fire; unlike Rama she has not been granted a faithful, gentle partner; she feels a sisterhood with Sita, bound together in a silk without end; and that silk would wrap the blush of Draupadi, the epic heroine whom men tried to shame. Then she follows her own journey. Her name is a journey; her life is a weave of journeys, rough and smooth. Moving to England, she loses her first language, which falls on soil where it cannot grow; she labours to speak with a Manchester accent; and English speakers trip over her name, turning its music into a jarring rhyme and dulling its mystery. She ends in an English echo chamber that seems to have no history and no memory. She is proud, wounded, articulate, and aware of exactly what has been taken.
An epic heritage
The first part of the poem measures the speaker's life against the great Hindu epics.
Key moment. The speaker likening her hardship to Rama's exile in the wilderness (Opening couplets). She places her own struggles inside the oldest stories of her heritage. The comparison makes her life heroic and painful at once.
Key moment. The speaker describing herself humbled and punished through a trial by fire (Opening couplets). The image recalls Sita's ordeal in the Ramayana. The speaker has felt judged and tested.
Key moment. The speaker noting that she has not been blessed with a partner as sweet, loyal, pure and true as the epic's faithful wife (Opening couplets). A list of ideal qualities marks what her life has lacked. The tone is wistful.
Key moment. The speaker imagining herself bound to Sita as sisters in a silk without end (Opening couplets). Cloth imagery joins her to a female tradition. The silk suggests protection and connection.
Key moment. The sisters' silk imagined wrapping the blush of Draupadi (Opening couplets). In the Mahabharata Draupadi's sari never ends when men try to strip her. Faith becomes a covering against a threatening world.
The name as a journey
The second part turns from myth to the speaker's own migration.
Key moment. The speaker calling her name a journey and her life a weave of journeys (Middle). The title's metaphor becomes explicit. Identity is movement, made of many travels woven together.
Key moment. Rough and smooth set side by side, banyan leaves beside sugar cane (Middle). Contrasting textures from Indian landscapes. Her life has held both hardship and sweetness.
Language and loss
Arriving in England, the speaker loses more than a place.
Key moment. Her Punjabi knocked loose and falling on English soil where nothing will grow (Later couplets). Her first language is uprooted and cannot take root again. England is presented as barren ground for her heritage.
Key moment. The speaker labouring to speak with a Manchester accent (Later couplets). Learning a new way of speaking is hard work, like manual toil.
Key moment. Her name becoming a stumble in English mouths, a jarring rhyme with its rhythm dulled (Later couplets). Others cannot say her name; its music and meaning are lost in their mouths.
Key moment. An English echo chamber described as empty of history and memory (Final couplet). The ending suggests she was expected to become English and forget her past. The final note is loss.
How Mundair builds the speaker in language and structure
The speaker is built through allusion first and memory second. She defines herself by the epics before she tells her own story, so we meet her heritage before her migration.
Cloth imagery — silk, saris, woven tapestries, a protective wrap — runs through her voice, presenting identity as something woven and worn.
Her account of England uses images of soil, labour and sound: language that will not grow, an accent she must toil for, a name that trips English tongues.
The couplets, loosened into free verse and carried by enjambment, give each image room while letting the journey run on.
The speaker in context
The poet. Raman Mundair was born in India and grew up in England, including Manchester, before settling in Scotland. The speaker's journey — from India to a Manchester accent — echoes that public biography, but read the speaker as the voice of the poem rather than as a record of the poet's private life.
Names in a new country. Many children who moved from South Asia to England in the second half of the twentieth century had to learn English at school, and found their names misspelled, mispronounced or shortened by teachers and classmates. The speaker's experience reflects a common one.
Relationships
- Her heritage — The epics, faith and language she brings with her.
- England — The country that cannot pronounce her name.
What The speaker stands for
- The name: identity carried on a journey.
- Silk and cloth: heritage as protection and connection.
- Soil: the ground where language can or cannot grow.
Why Mundair made The speaker
- To show the depth of an identity a new country cannot see.
- To present migration as a loss of language and memory.
- To keep a heritage alive in form and allusion.
Other readings
- A proud woman asserting a rich identity.
- A wounded migrant mourning what she lost.
- A protester exposing what England demanded of her.
Essay arguments
- Mundair presents a speaker whose name carries an epic heritage, so England's failure to pronounce it becomes a failure to see who she is.
- The image of Punjabi falling on barren English soil presents migration as the uprooting of a language.
- By ending in a life without history or memory, the poem shows the cost of being made to fit in.
In theme essays
- Identity and names.
- Language and loss.
- Heritage and faith.
Questions that get asked
- How does Mundair present identity in Name Journeys and one other poem from Worlds and Lives?
- Explore how two Worlds and Lives poems present language and belonging.
England and its listeners
A new country that hears a name as a stumble
England in the poem is not described as a landscape but as a set of listeners and a kind of ground. Its soil cannot grow the speaker's Punjabi. Its accent — the English of Manchester — must be laboured for. Its people trip over her name, hearing its sound as a jarring rhyme and losing its mystery. And the life it offers seems to have no history and no memory. England is presented as a place that asks newcomers to fit in and does not make room for what they bring.
Listeners who cannot hear
England appears through the mouths and ears of its people.
Key moment. English mouths stumbling over the speaker's name (Later couplets). The difficulty is theirs, but the cost is hers: her name is made awkward.
Key moment. The name's music heard as a jarring rhyme, its exotic rhythm dulled (Later couplets). What was beautiful becomes ugly in unfamiliar ears. Even the word exotic marks her as strange.
Key moment. English soil on which her first language cannot grow (Later couplets). The country is barren ground for her heritage.
How Mundair builds England in language and structure
England is built from three images: barren soil, a hard-won accent, and stumbling mouths. It is never described as a place with streets or weather.
The verbs attached to England are of failure and difficulty: language falls and cannot grow, speech must be laboured for, names are tripped over.
England arrives late in the poem, after the epic figures, so it stands in sharp contrast to the rich world that came before.
England in context
Punjabi. Punjabi is the language of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan, and the first language of many South Asian families in Britain.
Assimilation. Pressure on migrants to assimilate — to speak only English, adopt English ways and leave the past behind — was common in Britain in the decades after the Second World War. The final image of a life without history or memory can be read against that pressure.
Relationships
- The speaker — The newcomer whose name and language it cannot take in.
What England and its listeners stands for
- Barren soil: a place where heritage cannot grow.
- Stumbling mouths: a failure of attention.
Why Mundair made England and its listeners
- To show a country that does not make room for newcomers' identities.
- To show the pressure to assimilate.
Other readings
- A hostile place.
- An indifferent place.
- A place that simply does not know how to listen.
Essay arguments
- Mundair presents England as barren soil and stumbling mouths, so the failure to welcome her is shown as a failure to hear.
- England offers the speaker a life without history or memory, the cost of assimilation.
In theme essays
- Language and loss.
- Identity and names.
Questions that get asked
- How is England presented in Name Journeys?
- Explore how two Worlds and Lives poems present a place that does not welcome someone.
The themes
Identity and names
A name that carries a whole world.
The poem's subject is a name and the identity it carries. The title makes the name a traveller: it journeys from India to England, and changes on the way.
In the first part, the speaker's identity is vast. She places her life alongside Rama, Sita and Draupadi, figures from the great Hindu epics. Her name belongs to a world of gods, heroes and ancient stories.
In England that identity is reduced to a sound others cannot say. Her name trips English tongues; its music becomes a clumsy rhyme; its rhythm is dulled. The richness of the first part makes the reduction in the second painful.
The poem suggests that a name is never just a label. To mishear it is to miss the person; to dull it is to dull them.
Use this in an essay. Mundair presents a name as the carrier of a whole identity, so that when English mouths stumble over it and its rhythm is dulled, the poem shows a country failing not just to pronounce a woman but to see her.
Language and loss
A first language that cannot take root.
The speaker loses her first language on the journey. Her Punjabi is knocked loose and falls on English soil where nothing will grow. The image presents language as a living plant that needs the right ground.
At the same time she must labour to learn the English of Manchester. The verb of hard labour shows that acquiring a new voice is exhausting work.
The loss of language is linked to the loss of memory. The final image of a life without history and memory suggests that when the first language goes, much of the past goes with it.
Yet the poem itself is a kind of answer. Written in English but in a South Asian form, full of Hindu allusion, it carries the heritage the speaker says was lost.
Heritage and faith
Epics, saris and a sisterhood of silk.
The speaker's heritage is present in her faith and its stories. She measures her life against Rama's exile and the trial by fire, wishes for a partner as faithful as Sita, and feels bound to Sita in a silk without end.
The image of Draupadi is especially powerful. In the Mahabharata, when men try to strip Draupadi, her sari never ends. The speaker wraps herself in a similar protection, suggesting that her faith and heritage keep her safe in a hostile world.
Some readers also see a feminist note in the sisterhood of silk: a line of women joined together, protected and strong.
Heritage is not presented as simple comfort. The epic comparisons also bring exile, trial and absence. Her tradition gives her a language for suffering as well as strength.
Migration and change (minor)
A life woven from journeys.
The speaker describes her life as a weave of journeys, rough and smooth. Migration is not a single event but a pattern running through her whole life.
The weave image suggests that migration does not erase earlier threads; it adds new ones. Yet the poem's ending suggests that some threads were pulled out. The tension between the woven life and the emptied memory is one of the poem's most interesting contradictions.
Contrasting images from Indian landscapes — rough banyan leaves, sweet sugar cane — show that her journeys have brought both hardship and sweetness.
Context
Context: the epics, the ghazal and a migrant childhood
The Hindu epics. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the two great epics of Hinduism, told and retold across South Asia for well over two thousand years. Rama's exile and Sita's trial by fire come from the Ramayana; Draupadi's endless sari comes from the Mahabharata. For many South Asian families these stories are part of everyday culture, not only of religion.
A migrant childhood. Raman Mundair was born in India and grew up in England, including Manchester, and now lives in Scotland. Children who moved from South Asia to England in the later twentieth century often had to learn English quickly and found their names misheard, misspelled or changed, while being encouraged to fit in. The poem's lost Punjabi, laboured Manchester accent and stumbled-over name reflect that experience; read them as the poem's, not as private biography.
Use context in single clauses attached to moments: Draupadi's sari with the image of protective silk; the ghazal with the poem's couplets; assimilation with the final emptiness.
Form, voice and comparison
Form: a loosened ghazal
The poem is written in couplets, in a version of the ghazal. The ghazal is a form of poetry from Arabic and Persian traditions, much loved in South Asia, especially in Urdu. A traditional ghazal is made of couplets, each fairly complete in itself, often about longing, love and separation, with strict patterns of rhyme and rhythm.
Mundair loosens the form. She keeps the couplets but writes in free verse, with plenty of enjambment that carries sense from one couplet into the next. The form is both kept and changed — like the speaker's identity.
Choosing a South Asian form for a poem about losing a South Asian language is significant. The heritage survives in the poem's shape.
Structure: myth, then migration
The poem falls into two parts. The opening couplets set the speaker's life against the Hindu epics. The later couplets follow her journey to England and its losses.
The movement is from the vast to the narrow: from gods and heroes to a name that English mouths trip over, and finally to a life without history or memory.
The poem ends on loss. It does not resolve the speaker's situation; it leaves the reader with the emptiness the English echo chamber offers.
Language: allusion, cloth and soil
Allusion to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata gives the speaker's life epic scale.
Cloth imagery — silk, saris, woven tapestries — presents identity as woven, worn and protective.
Images of soil and growth present language as a plant that needs the right ground; images of sound present the failure of English listeners.
The epic figures
Rama is the hero of the Ramayana, exiled to the forest for fourteen years. Sita, his wife, is famed for her loyalty; after her rescue from captivity she undergoes a trial by fire to prove her purity. Draupadi is a heroine of the Mahabharata; when men try to strip her in public, her sari miraculously never ends.
Each figure brings an idea into the poem: exile, trial, faithful love, protection. Together they give the speaker a language for her own experience.
Key words and what they carry
ghazal: A poetic form of couplets from Arabic and Persian traditions, popular in South Asia, often about longing and separation.
Ramayana: A Hindu epic telling the story of Rama, his exile and his wife Sita.
Mahabharata: A Hindu epic, one of the longest poems ever composed, in which Draupadi appears.
sari: A long piece of cloth worn draped around the body, traditional in South Asia.
Punjabi: The language of the Punjab region of India and Pakistan.
assimilation: The process of being absorbed into a dominant culture, often at the cost of one's own.
Precise meanings support analysis: because a ghazal traditionally sings of separation, the poem's form already mourns the distance between the speaker and her first home.
Comparison: the strongest partners
Homing (Liz Berry) is a strong partner: both are about a voice a society did not value. Mundair's speaker loses her first language and her name's music; Berry's speaker wants to release a relative's hidden accent.
pot (shamshad khan) also explores what is lost when a culture is moved to England, and the fear of being told one is no longer one of us. A Wider View (Seneviratne) finds connection with an ancestor across time. On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955 (James Berry) shows a migrant's home misunderstood by an English stranger.
Grade 9 insight. Compare methods: Mundair's epic allusion and ghazal couplets; Berry's box metaphor and dialect; khan's direct address to an object.
Readings to weigh
Another reading. A loss reading: the poem mourns a language, a name and a memory taken by migration.
Another reading. A protest reading: the poem exposes a country that asked migrants to forget themselves.
Another reading. A survival reading: the heritage the speaker says she lost survives in the poem's form and allusions.
Shock the examiner: what most answers miss
Most answers skip the Hindu figures. They are the point: they show how vast the speaker's identity is before England reduces it to a sound people trip over.
The poem is written in a loosened ghazal, a South Asian form traditionally about longing and separation. A poem about losing a South Asian language keeps that heritage alive in its shape.
Cloth runs through the poem: silk, saris, woven tapestries, Draupadi's endless sari. Identity is something woven, worn and protective — and something others may try to strip.
The image of Punjabi falling on English soil where it cannot grow makes language a living plant. England is not cruel in the image; it is simply barren for her.
The poem ends with a life empty of history and memory. But the poem itself is full of both — so its ending can be read as a protest against the very emptiness it describes.
Thesis statements
- Mundair presents a name as the carrier of an epic heritage, so England's failure to pronounce it becomes a failure to see who the speaker is.
- Name Journeys moves from the vast world of the Hindu epics to a life without history or memory, presenting migration as a narrowing of identity.
- The image of a first language falling on soil where it cannot grow presents assimilation as the uprooting of something living.
- By writing in a loosened ghazal, Mundair keeps alive in the poem's form the heritage its speaker says was lost.
- Cloth imagery — silk, saris, woven journeys — presents identity as woven and protective, and its loss as a kind of stripping.
Essay plans
How do Name Journeys and one other poem from Worlds and Lives present language and identity?
Thesis: Both Mundair and Liz Berry write about a voice that a society would not value, but Mundair's speaker loses her Punjabi and hears her name stumbled over as she is made to fit in, while Berry's speaker wants to break open the box where a relative hid her accent and let the old words spill out — so one poem records a voice lost and the other tries to win one back.
- What is lost: a first language and a name's music against a hidden accent.
- Imagery: barren soil and stumbling mouths against a locked box and coal-dark consonants.
- Form: ghazal couplets against free-verse stanzas.
- Endings: a life without memory against a voice shouted from the roofs. Conclude on loss and reclamation.
Explore how poets present heritage in Name Journeys and one other Worlds and Lives poem.
Thesis: Mundair and Seneviratne both measure a present life against an inheritance, but Mundair's inheritance is myth and language, placed against an England that dulls them, while Seneviratne's is an ancestor in the same city, whose view joins hers — so one poem shows heritage cut off by migration and the other heritage recovered in a place.
- The inheritance: epic figures and a language against a working ancestor.
- Place: a journey away against a return to the same streets.
- Imagery: silk and soil against mills and a tower.
- Endings: emptiness against connection. Conclude on heritage lost and found.
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Carry on
- The Complete Guide to Name Journeys — the whole text, told properly, in 26 chapters.
- The anthology as one system: Grade 9 Notes — the themes that bind the sixteen, the strongest pairings, and how to choose the second poem in the comparative essay.
- Name Journeys · All set texts · The 4ET1 specification