Hurricane Hits England is a poem by Grace Nichols. The poem is about a powerful hurricane in England which reminded her of her native land as there were hurricanes there. The poem is also about living in two different cultures as the poet comes from the Caribbean but lives in England. Towards the end of the poem she thinks about her homeland in Guyana. The last verse in the poem is ‘the earth is the earth is the earth’. I think she means that she is the same person wherever she lives and that everywhere is the same. The poem starts by describing a hurricane in the night on the south coast of England as it being upsetting and frightening. But she also felt reassured as it reminded her of her childhood in Africa, as she experienced hurricanes there too. She talks to the hurricane, using names like ‘Oya’ and ‘Shango’. These reflect her religious culture because they are names of gods of wind and thunder. Then she asks why the hurricane came to England. It seems to be ‘old tongues’, or things she remembers, which have come back in a new place. She describes the destruction by saying that the electricity is off and trees are uprooted. But amazingly she feels happy and her heart is ‘unchained’. She says she’s following the movement of the winds, and that this storm has changed her. So the poem is not just about the storm, it’s more to do with how she sees England. The poet writes about a ‘frozen lake’ which the hurricane breaks. So she has been set free and now feels closer to England than she did before because she realises that ‘the earth is the earth is the earth’ meaning it is the same world we live on, and we are all connected together in some way. The poem uses images and metaphors to make the poets ideas come alive. For example the wind is a ‘howling ship’, this not only makes us think of the noise but also that the wind is going from place to place. This is what the poet did when she moved to England then inside her mind she has moved back to the Caribbean....