“Listen Mr. Oxford Don” is a poem wrote by John Agard. John Agard writes about a crime he has made. The crime is, that he has not spoken the English language properly. The author speaks about how people are accusing him, for making he´s own version of the English language. Our author is low in both the social- and language hierarchy, because he talks as a baby” me not no oxford don me a simple immigrant” he is in the beginning of learning the language. And we can see that he comes from a worker community, that shows that he is low in the social hierarchy.
John Agard does not show anger in his poem although the poem does sound very harsh, but it is not considered as something violent, because when he says he want to spread it up, we know he talks about a language and not a person. He describes how he is seen a criminal, as we can see in stanza 2 “But listen Mr. Oxford don I'm a man on de run and a man on de run is a dangerous one” in this stanza Agard says he is a criminal, a man against the law, but Agard is not disagreeing with the accusation he is rather agreeing with the accusations. He also says that he is dangerous, as if the English people should be afraid of him. But when we see the video where he says the poem, he is exaggerating with his body language and mimic so the poem gets a sarcastic tone. as we read the through the poem, we see that there is a dialect, although dialect is not seen as problem for destroying the language, it is more seen to characterize, where a person is from. So, from the dialect we can both see and hear in the poem. John Agard is an uneducated immigrant from a worker community, who only wants a peaceful place to live, this is seen here in stanza 1” Me not no Oxford don me a simple immigrant from Clapham Common I didn't graduate I immigrate” in this stanza he says, he is not an Oxford Don, he is referring to a university degree educated person, when he says Oxford Don.
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