Auntie by Nadine Aisha Jassat

• Auntie by Nadine Aisha Jassat is a very personal poem where the speaker remembers their aunt.
• The first half of the poem focuses on the aunt’s hands and skin, and how she cooks and looks after the speaker.
• The aunt is described in warm detail as a gentle, nurturing person who represents ‘home’.
• The second half of the poem depicts the rush and stress of city life, which contrasts with an earlier but gentler awakening to the comforting sound of the aunt’s soft prayers.

Each reader will interpret what a poem means to them in their own way. Everyone's response is different. While Auntie may be a personal tribute to Jassat's own aunt, the reader can separate the poet from the words of the poem and think about how they contribute to wider themes or feelings.

This poem explores themes of:

• family
• identity
• human connection
• loss

You can read Auntie by Nadine Aisha Jassat on the Scottish Poetry Library website.

Nadine Aisha Jassat is a Scottish poet and storyteller. Her writing often explores themes of identity, loss, and human connection. She has received various awards and accolades, including being named one of ‘30 Inspiring Women Under 30’ by YWCA Scotland (the Young Women’s Movement).

Jassat is of mixed race, and this identity informs a lot of her writing. Her mother is from Yorkshire in England and her father is from Zimbabwe in Africa. In her essay ‘Daughter of Stories’, Jassat writes:

"I can see that the family I grew up in and was shaped by comprised not only the people around me – my parents and siblings in the UK and my close-knit, wider family in Zimbabwe whom we saw once a year – but also the ghost-like legacies of the previous generations of women in my family. […] When my father told my brothers and me stories about Ma and Aunt, he was also telling us about Zimbabwe, about what it meant to be Muslim, about family, about a whole other life and way of being which existed across the gulf between the UK and Zimbabwe."

(‘Daughter of Stories’, published in It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race)

The twelve lines of Auntie by Nadine Aisha Jassat are divided into three verses.

• The first two verses are each three lines long.
  • Each verse contain one idea in these three lines.
• The third verse has six lines
  • The first two lines are made of shorter phrases that create a slightly faster pace to the description of modern city life.
  • The final four lines are more flowing as the speaker recalls gentler mornings with the aunt.

There is no rhyme scheme with this poem and the free verse allows for the speaker to remember aspects of their aunt as they come to them.

The poem is a self-contained whole; it starts and ends with a very warm memory of the aunt.

The poem begins with a description of the aunt's hands.

My Aunt’s hands are soft and brown

The possessive ‘My’ at the start of the poem creates a sense of ownership and pride. Likewise, the capitalisation of ‘Aunt’ makes the person sound special: this is her name, she is not just any aunt.

Hands are often symbolic of detail, closeness, and affection. The word ‘soft’ brings in the sense of touch more explicitly, as the speaker has clearly been touched by or held their aunt’s hands. Their softness suggests gentleness and delicacy. This could suggest the aunt's nature as well as how they literally feel.

Next, ‘brown’ brings in another sense: sight. The first line finishes with this image, which suggests its importance. This word choice brings in themes of race and identity.

The third sense described in the poem is smell:

they smell like cumin and coriander.

This alludes to the aunt's, and therefore the speaker's, cultural heritage. The alliterative‘cumin and coriander’ are often associated with Asian and African cooking. This links to the poet's own heritage as her father (her aunt's brother) is from Zimbabwe in Africa.

The speaker also uses the present tense‘they smell’ to suggest that the smell of the herbs is always on the aunt's skin, rather than a one-off event in the past. This implies that the aunt cooks a lot, which creates a nurturing picture of her.

The last line of the first verse is a new sentence that makes a metaphorical statement about the aunt:

She is a gardener in the kitchen.

This is an unexpected juxtaposition - it is surprising to be a gardener anywhere other than in the garden. However, the ‘kitchen’ refers back to the idea of cooking in the previous line, and we can think of gardening in terms of nurturing, growing, and tending.

You could imagine perhaps pots of herbs growing on a windowsill, or the use of fresh produce. Perhaps this care and attention is what the speaker feels their aunt has given them through cooking. Just as a gardener cares for and tends to plants, the aunt nurtures the people she cares for with food.

The lack of clarity in this line, which is heavy with suggestion, creates a sort of cliff-hanger at the end of this first verse. It makes us want to read on to find out more about this person.

A metaphor describes something by saying it is something else. A gardener by definition doesn't work in a kitchen, so calling the aunt ‘a gardener in the kitchen’ is an example of a metaphor.

This comparison highlights the aunt's ability to tend to her family through cooking, like a gardener nurtures their plants and helps them grow.

Brush up on your understanding of metaphors and why writers use them with this National 5 English revision video.

In the second verse, the speaker addresses the aunt directly.

Auntie, I remember your skin

The use of ‘Auntie’ confirms and strengthens the affection suggested in the previous verse. ‘I remember’ suggests a parting or separation. There may have been a death, they may not live in the same place or be together anymore, but the closeness is still there, as hinted at by the intimacy of the ‘skin’ and ‘hands’.

The comparison to a bus route in line five suggests familiarity, almost an ordinary or mundane knowledge of the aunt.

the way some people remember the bus route.

Although the poet does not use ‘like’ or ‘as’ here, this comparison is a simile. It uses the comparative phrase ‘the way’, which does the same job as ‘like’ or ‘as’ (an indirect comparison). If this was a metaphor, the poet would say the aunt's skin is a bus route (a direct comparison). Try swapping ‘the way’ in this quote with ‘like’ to check this.

The comparison between the aunt's skin and knowledge of a bus route suggests a completely instinctive knowledge of this person and how they look, feel, and are. As some point the aunt's skin was something they saw every day.

The personal nature of this verse is emphasised by the repetition of ‘I’ and the final word of the verse - ‘home’ - adds weight to this and suggests the importance of the aunt to the speaker.

I know I need to trace it to go home.

The word 'trace' can have many meanings here:

• It could mean the speaker is trying to find or discover something. Perhaps they are trying to rediscover a connection and sense of belonging.
• It could suggest copying or following something, like a child following the path of a line with a pencil or their finger. Is the speaker remembering an image from childhood, when they ran their finger across their aunt's skin?
• A trace can mean the mark left by something, and suggests something indistinct. This could imply a mix of memory and a sense of loss.

Like the first verse, which focuses on the aunt's nurturing nature, these three lines contain a single, extended idea. The second section focuses on the idea that the aunt represents home to the speaker.

Ideas conveyed here are a sense of belonging, a sense of meaning, self-knowledge, and comfort. There are feelings of yearning and nostalgia here too in ‘need to trace it’ as the speaker seems wistful and keen to get back to a place where they feel known, loved and comfortable and this is represented by the aunt. This can be a literal place, like the speaker's aunt's house, or just this sense of comfort and love.

In this last, longer verse, the opening lines are shorter. This has the effect of speeding up any reading of the poem whilst taking in each fragment on its own merits.

This section starts with a contrast to the previous gentle description of the aunt, which may explain why the speaker is thinking of her and missing her. Intrusive and unwelcome aspects of life, probably in the city, are described here. The ‘bus route’ which was happily linked to the aunt's skin is now:

The world of work, bus bells and sirens

The last word of the previous verse was ‘home’ so it would suggest a link to where the speaker now lives. The list of three is summed up in a metaphor, describing working life and the sounds of the city as:

harsh alarm clocks.

The word ‘harsh’ emphasises how difficult these are to contend with. The ‘alarm clocks’ explain that these are the things that wake the speaker up now, either literally through the unpleasant noises they make, or symbolically with the requirement to get up to go to work.

After this harsh intrusion, the speaker moves on to tell the reader they would prefer to wake up naturally with the morning light. ‘5 am’ seems very early. However, they describe the sunlight waking them up naturally and ‘gently’, and therefore it is preferable, even if it is very early.

The words in lines 11 and 12 emphasise the gentleness of the aunt described all the way through this poem:

your softly whispered duas / welcoming the morning.

‘Duas’ are prayers to Allah in Islam. This gives us a clearer picture of the identity of the aunt, and, to some degree, of the speaker.

The word ‘welcoming’ is a warm word and though it is used here in relation to the prayers and the morning or the day ahead, as the last line of the poem it makes us feel welcome as well and part of the family, leaving us with very positive feelings about the aunt.

The title of the poem, Auntie, points to the theme of family and the strong connection between the speaker and their aunt is clear throughout the poem. The use of the more informal and affectionate word, ‘Auntie’, tells the reader about their closeness.

The speaker starts by talking about the aunt’s hands and describes them in detail, which only a close family member could do. Their love and admiration for their aunt continues in the second verse when the aunt is addressed directly, saying:

I remember your skin

The remainder of the poem makes it clear that the speaker is now living separately from their aunt, or perhaps their aunt has died, and this is demonstrated through the contrast between life with and without the aunt – making it clear that family life is missed.

In the first line, the aunt’s hands are described as ‘soft and brown’, and later the speaker says of her skin:

I know I need to trace it to go home.

This suggests the speaker feels separated from 'home', whether that means the aunt's love and care, or some aspect of their heritage, or a more literal place where the speaker will feel safe and content. Feelings of mixed identity are highlighted in this poem through the contrast between:

• the city life: ‘The world of work, bus bells and sirens’
• the gentle awakening by the aunt repeating Islamic prayers early in the morning: ‘your softly whispered duas / welcoming the morning.’

The love and warmth with which the aunt is described indicates the speaker's positivity towards that side of their family, and that side of their identity.

The connection between the speaker and their aunt is clear throughout the poem. Love is described through words such as ‘soft’, ‘gently’ and ‘welcoming’.

Family relationships are so important they are described as ‘home’. Thinking about the aunt takes the speaker back there:

I know I need to trace it to go home.

The reader can’t help but think about their own relationships and those around them while reading this poem, making human connection an important theme.

As well as the warmth felt throughout the poem, there is also a strong sense of loss and, to some extent, grief. The aunt has possibly died or has certainly parted from the speaker, who has left the aunt to live a life with ‘bus bells’ and ‘sirens’. The speaker describes family life with much more affection.

The aunt represents ‘home’, which has been lost. The memories are so clear and detailed they are like a ‘familiar bus route’. The senses are evoked in the descriptions of the aunt – ‘soft’, ‘smell’, ‘light’, ‘whispered’ – which make the closeness clear and the suggestion of loss is apparent.

The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray by anonymous

Auntie can be connected to The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray in terms of human connection and love, and ideas around loss.

The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray mourns the death of a noble man, admired for his beauty, skill and many virtues. Like the speaker's aunt, the Earl of Moray is described with affection and admiration: ‘He was a braw gallant’ and ‘He might hae been a king.’

The Twa Corbies by anonymous

The Twa Corbies also discusses issues around loss, specifically death, but without the affection displayed in Auntie. The aunt in Auntie is remembered fondly by her family but the knight’s loved ones seem to have abandoned him:

And naebody kens that he lies there

However the stark, matter-of-fact description of the dead knight in this poem are as detailed and powerful as the loving description of the poet’s aunt in Auntie.

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

Human connection is also a strong theme in A Red, Red Rose. However, the love here is for a partner and not a family member.

Both Jassat and Burns ask us to consider the longevity of love and human connection. The speaker in Auntie describes the memory of their aunt in warm, loving detail. It is clear that there is a lasting legacy to this relationship that goes beyond physical closeness, as the speaker longs to return to gentle mornings with family. Likewise, Burns conveys the powerful and everlasting nature of love. The speaker's love will continue:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear, / And the rocks melt wi’ the sun

Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott

In Lochinvar, the main theme is also love. This poem tells a heroic tale of a knight stealing his love away from another marriage. Like Auntie, this poem describes love and human connection with intimate detail. The narrator describes details of the bride such as the ‘smile on her lips’, the ‘tear in her eye’ and ‘her soft hand’.

Little Girls by Len Pennie

Little Girls can be connected to Auntie through the theme of identity. Auntie explores identity through family and heritage. The powerful voice in Little Girls encourages the ‘little girls’ to rise up and take hold of their own identity in the face of stronger, sometimes abusive men.

Further reading

You can find out more about the texts in the National 5 English poetry collection on the University of Glasgow website.

Revise Auntie by Nadine Aisha Jassat with this interactive quiz for National 5 English.