Analysing ‘A Portable Paradise’, Roger Robinson

Contextual background

Roger Robinson is a black writer and performer who splits his time between London and Trinidad in the Caribbean. A Portable Paradise is the titular poem of his collection A Portable Paradise, published in 2019.

One critic writes that his “work is shrouded in darkness, a tenebrous blanket that provokes our every sense.” “From quotidian calamities and injustice, to the recount of history’s darkest hours,” they say, “Robinson relentlessly reminds us of the evil that stalks the land. Suffering is ubiquitous, shadowing our every move.”

Introduction to the poem

Robinson says that 'A Portable Paradise' “originates in my experience of returning to England from Trinidad when I was 19. Before I left Trinidad, there was a popular song by an Australian band called Crowded House. The chorus went ‘Everywhere you go always take the weather with you’. When faced with my first winter (when winter was really winter) I’d find myself singing that song to try and cheer up, as my left my Grandmother’s house to go to my industrial laundry job. The work was arduous and I found myself constantly looking at pictures from Trinidad.”

Written in free verse, the poem is a celebration of the power of imagination, and is built around a single piece of advice given to the poet by his grandmother. It represents the poet’s personal vision of “Paradise”, which for Robinson resembles the “white sands, green hills and fresh fish” of tropical Trinidad.

Key thematic features

Imagination as a form of escapism and resilience: Robinson positions himself as a poète engagé (a politically engaged poet) in many of his works, having written about prominent socio-political issues such as the Grenfell disaster, Windrush, slavery, the Brixton riots and the death of Rashan Charles. In 'A Portable Paradise', however, he creates an imaginative space away from these oppressive social realities, conjuring up his own personal vision of paradise. For the poet, paradise is a representation of the Caribbean, with its “white sands, green hills and fresh fish”.

One critic says that paradise is used as “a potent symbol for psychic resilience”, offering a tool to live alongside an unjust social order. Moreover, the Caribbean is often mythologised by colonisers as a tropical Eden. Robinson reclaims that imagery, the “white sands, green hills and fresh fish”, not as a colonial fantasy, but as an intimate, personal homeland, carried in memory by those who have left it.

Heritage: The source of the poem’s wisdom is the poet’s grandmother, testifying (like Kipling’s poem If) to the family’s role in bequeathing fortitude, heritage and resilience:

“And if I speak of Paradise / then I’m speaking of my grandmother.”

The grandmother represents the ancestral voice, the keeper of wisdom, faith and resilience. In Caribbean and diasporic traditions, grandmothers often embody the oral archive of survival, passing down lessons in coded, poetic form. Her advice to “carry it always […] concealed” resonates with how enslaved and colonised peoples had to hide their spirituality, language, and hope to preserve them.

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Key stylistic features

Echoes of Kipling's poem 'If': We might hear echoes of Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem 'If', which similarly endorses a powerful vision of stoicism and which similarly uses anaphora (the repetition of the word “If”) to create rhetorical emphasis. Unlike Kipling’s 'If', however, 'A Portable Paradise' does not provide guidance on how the reader should interact with the external world, but rather endorses introspection and internal retreat.

Extended metaphor: The poem uses the extended metaphor of a physical object to illustrate how people should relate to their personal paradises. A paradise, like a physical object, can be stolen, it can be held in the pocket, it can be smelt and felt, and it can be emptied onto a desk. In this way, the poet represents the alchemical power of imagination, its ability to transform pure figments into the stuff of reality.

Loose conversational effect: The poem’s extensive use of caesura, the second person, and enjambment contributes to its loose, conversational effect, drawing the reader into a confidence that feels intimate and unstudied.

Imagery of hope: The poem ends on an image of hope and renewal:

“Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope/of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.”

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