SEARCH FOR ELYSIUM
Professor Dr. R.K. Singh
and Mitali De Sarkar
=======================================================================
SEARCH FOR ELYSIUM
=====================================================================
Like Shiv K. Kumar, Keki N. Daruwala and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Stephen Gill was 00004000 born in Pakistan (Sialkot) and speaks Punjabi, Urdu and English, as well as some other languages. These poets stayed in different parts of India. Like several prominent authors, including Bharati Mukherjee, Uma Parameswaran and Rohinton Mistry, Stephen Gill migrated to Canada in search of better economic prospects, not knowing his step could ultimately turn out to be a struggle to discover his own identity.
Reading Gill's verses one finds he is his Indian self seeking a voice in a new land. His social norms, standards and values are neither fully Indian nor fully Western, but rather international. His concerns are human and his contexts increasingly become global. Perhaps his cross-cultural experiences enrich his creative sensibility even as he finds himself a foreigner in his adopted country and a stranger in his homeland.
Caught between two cultures, Indian and Canadian, he puts up with culture shock and adjustment conflicts, something every expatriate faces :
In the valley of terror
my bones crack,
shooting pains of insecurity,
while the pride of my ego
shamelessly mocks my nakedness.1
He feels like a "deer lost in the jungle" and expresses his dismay when he says Often I have to caress/even those thorns/which knowingly pierce/my feet.2
He tries to bring some disparate fragments of experience into significant wholes-- as every good poet does-- building meaning out of confusion. Ironically, he seems to challenge the mainstream Canadian poets who are sceptical about immigrant Canadian poets like him.
I wish I could capture you
in the rainbows of my pen, but
I am not a poet so skilled !3
Stephen Gill struggles for his identity in his country of adoption just as he looks to his old country (India) for appreciation :
For you
often I have tried to write
but alas
many more wounds exist
than love's wound.4
Immigrant Psyche
Though Stephen Gill is not a Canadian by birth and his sensibility is essentially international, his works add to the ethnic pluralism of Canada. His poetry incorporates Indian consciousness that he offers from an international perspective when he says :
Thy land and life
and springs
thy summer and fall
and skies
and joyful birds--
delight-giving sights--
breathe a new life in me.5
Yet, reading his poems, novels and stories one experiences an immigrant-consciousness at work: there is a conflict between his Indian ethos and the forces of marginal existence and nagging inconveniences in the country of his adoption. The poet evolves through raw socio-cultural pressure, barriers of race, religion, colour, and nationality making creative writing a survival process, a process of coping with the uncertainties of the new environment, new social structure, new values, new politics and new relations.
He suffers changes, swift and fundamental, shaking even the most basic human conditions; the complexity, diversity and rapid pace of change makes him appear a stranger in his own eyes, away from his own familiar society, often leaving him nostalgic. He voyages into the future, sometimes with an idealist tinge. He copes with his surroundings and probes aspects of Canadian life--sometimes as a mainstream Canadian and sometimes as an immigrant-- the two psyches ever active in his mind.
The conflict between his loyalty to the land he has come from and the new land-- his adoptive country, his willingness to accept the new geophysical setting and the resistance or unconcealed hostility of the host society leave an indelible impression in his thought process. The poet is ever indignant of "xenophobic" nationalists whom he calls "stinking vultures" that "rest in rusted tombs".6
Bewitched by the magic of Canada, the poet voyages to this new land, which was unknown, untravelled, unexploited and so intriguing in the beginning. It could possibly have provided a challenge, a new motivating force by which to live his life. But the unsettling experience of racial discrimination makes him feel uncomfortable. Once again he assesses his status as a newcomer to Canada, as an individual, and as a human being, "caught at the honeycombed crossroads" of "divided humanity" , expressed in one of his trilliums : In the pots of patriotism/poisons are often prepared/to kill the lily of peace.7
His creative exercises reflect the adjustment pangs of an immigrant who has lived through and survived against the hostility generated mainly out of the uncosmopolitan profile of his so-called cosmopolitan surroundings. The range of emotions and sentiments experienced by Gill is common to most of the unfairly treated immigrants. The supercilious attitude of the mainstream citizens, hurtful insults and motivated racial assaults cripple them both physically and psychologically and, as a reaction to the feelings of hurt, they take recourse in voicing their protest through the medium of writing. He vehemently protests-- often with a touch of desolation-- against the demons of bigotries :"... life will not be the same/because the night of racial prejudice/chews peace/in the jaws of endless depth."8 This protest is more vivid in "An Immigrant Complains."9
Nostalgia
Since Gill did not live his formative years in Canada nor grow up in its landscapes that could speak to him directly-- he migrated as a grown man-- he creates in terms of those cultural images with which he feels at home. The luxuriant new landscape of Canada makes him nostalgic about the villages and rivers he experienced as a child. There is a lurking feeling that he is not able to love the new country as he is not able to love his country of birth. This element of distance is always present both in his poetry and fiction. This is not necessarily a negative element but rather one of regret, because he seems to recognise the new environment as worthy of being his own, yet it is not. Hence the tension, a feeling of belonging and not belonging.
His sensibility is constantly in interaction with the new locale transmitting his experiences with the sort of creative tension every writer feels, articulating his or her inner growth. In fact, his becoming a Canadian citizen heightened his awareness of time and change: of the self isolated from others, of alienation, of the need to adapt to the present:
In a cabin of inaction
built with beams of silence
often I long to slumber
on a couch
with no flesh of worries.
For me
soft drops of harmony
shall produce a lullaby
from the notes of now.10
In this, he is similar to several contemporary writers who blend their native tradition and the tradition of their country of adoption into a personal style and manner with all its awkwardness that includes trite imagery and expression, sentimentality, and weak emotional, verbal or technical interest.
Despite being in the process of adjustment with his surroundings, Gill demonstrates a sense of subtle nebulous links that are latent within; he expresses inarticulate feelings and unrealised emotions against a new perspective. We don't see a Canadian person in the interior mindscape of the poet, we see an Indian person ruminating over beliefs, customs, ideals and values that were his but are now collapsing in the country of his adoption.
With the blurring of boundaries in the mental landscape that once surrounded his entire being, Gill is subjected to a nomadic subjectivity concerning his status in the new land. In this new setting he is constantly territorialised, deterritorialised and reterritorialised, creating a gaping void of uncertainty that makes him nostalgic for his mother's warmth : I wish to breathe undisturbed/within the walls of my womb...11
As Parthasarathy suggests, "exile", self-imposed or otherwise, makes one learn that "roots are deep." Stephen Gill is an illustration of the truth of this statement. It is perhaps his migration to Canada that explains his persistent obsession with the Indian past, both familial and racial, and it is this obsession that constitutes a major theme in all his poetry and is potently expressed in another trillium: A root unprotected/I need a wind/loving and kind.12
His memories of the moon beams of his homeland, absorbed through the eyes of a sensitive and observant boy, create an immediate need of warmth in the dismal land he is inhabiting :
Move not away moon
your beams I need
for the dismal land.13
Gill's nostalgia for his homeland is not solely romantic, it is rather based on the harsh realities of life, as everyday life in this new land has its own measure of mystery and fear. His poems reflect an ironic consciousness of the human loss and pain, a sense of disenchantment with spurious commercial prosperity and a feeling of despondency at the world-crisis towards which the society is heading.
Sociopolitical Awareness
Stephen Gill has taken writing as his mission or goal because his humanitarianism is seriously challenged when he sees waste, loss and mutual destruction again and again. He stridently denounces forces that promote extreme and vicious nationalism or fundamentalism. He liberates his mind through his poems and reveals his sociopolitical concerns by exposing human animus that heighten existential agonies of modern life :
The land of devils is empty
because its occupants
extend desert of savagery14
Gill delineates a basic struggle of the soul, the mind, and the body to comprehend life in its totality; what he communicates through the poetic medium is a confrontation of his whole being with reality and his response to it in a pungent and straight-forward manner. The overall atmosphere created in the poems reflecting his sociopolitical awareness is one of gloom and despair with a degree of pronounced melancholia. Disappointment is the keynote of this melancholia, whether with edgy complications of social insecurity or with insoluble problems of political instability. The poet tries to convey his message by instilling a sense of mortal fear and by extending a sense of desperation into the sympathetic minds of his readers with the help of strong words and phrases of arresting alliteration and assonance. The expressions "murky marshes", "ruthless locusts", "fetters ... cranking', "vomit violence", "ghosts of sorrow", "gloom of violence", "dust of despicable horror", "self-surrounding cells of egoism', "spiteful robots", "suffocative islands" etc. reveal a picture of devitalised society in the darkness of which the poet is jaded and lost.
He notices an unquenchable hunger for the manna whose source seems to have dried up suddenly because noxious germs of anarchy are let loose in the sociopolitical stratosphere : A sense of uneasiness about our hastening confusedly towards unknown ends is all the poet can make out of modern society. Gill, therefore, finds nothing in which to rejoice. For example, on the eve of the New Year, which overwhelms him with a mood of gloom; he finds this day the same as the days of the previous week or "even last year".15 In the same poem, the poet ironically observes that If nights were replaced by days/just by thinking,/the corners of darkness/would have been lit by now./ Eaters of stale crumbs/in the mornings/should have been welcomed/by the appetizing smells/of fresh and warm foods./The hours of suffering/would have been reduced,/joys lasted longer/and lives changed. The poem, like a prism, reflects the unchanging social scene which is gnawed by hunger, death, sorrow and suffering, as ever, and life does not wear another mantle;/only calendars become new.
Using classical/religious allusions to fallen angels in the poem "Beelzebub of Demands", Gill cleverly mocks the "seductive moans of social deities". Moral laxities, sexual indulgences, and political corruption and exploitation strike a staggering blow to the entire social system and the poet experiences an intense need to break the strings. He asks But how can I do it/when the Beelzebub of demands/chop off my wings.16
The poet believes that the channels of electronic media entertainment have added to the isolation of individuals, and people have increasingly become insensitive to simple pleasures like chatting over a cup of tea :
I wish to sit down
to talk and talk
and talk more
about this and that
over cups of tea.
But how and with whom
when all are hooked
to their own TV's.17
Sociopolitical upheavals causing loss of human values make Stephen Gill acutely conscious of the spiritual barrenness of the times. Gross human apathy towards the suffering of fellow-beings makes the poet question the forces of racism in his poem "To Humanists" :
Which humanity do you talk about ?
I saw her grisly dance
yesterday
at the railway station
where a handful of hooligans
scorned and hit a youth
of a different shade.
A wave of people rushed by,
either to catch a train
or to go home.18
Gill is more than pained to see that "No soul had the time/or maybe the courage,/to let those fallen angels know/they have derided the Creator".18
His political poems reveal his anger at the foul play and sinister game of senseless vendetta played by "discriminators" who crown humanity with thorns and hang it on the cross of dreams. These "traders of dead bodies" squeeze the last vestige of blood from life and "in the grave of aspirations" of human helplessness "reptiles" find their "home". He sadly observes that the "paucity of bridges" between the "islands of tensions" thickens the "darkness of doubts."19 Gill asks war mongers :
Is this
message of Christ
of saints and wise
to raze cottages
temples and churches
monuments and shrines...20
Anxieties related to war, terrorism, human rights violations, religious radicalism, hunger 00002C09 , racial discrimination and ecological imbalances are some of the major issues that sit heavy on his conscience :
I asked my conscience
if it had perceived
in the eyes of humankind
the unshed tears
of hurts and humiliations.
A touch of scorn in its silence
nettled me to ask
if it had ever heard
the bricks of my cries
falling
on the blades of the environment.21
An overpowering panic in the poet's psyche caused by the ravages of war seems to be the extension of his sociopolitical concerns.
War Consciousness
Humanity has witnessed the naked dance of death in the form of world wars; the worst spectacle was the use of atomic weapons during the Second World War. The poet is aware of savagery across the globe : "Humans look for an oasis/in human blood"22. However, the taste of blood was not enough for "war mongers". All the wars fought so far left the mute spectators of the whole world aghast at the large scale destruction caused by sophisticated techniques of massacre. Gill's sensitivity is aroused by these instances of ruthlessness.
The poet, a firm believer in democracy, decries war which disintegrates society and tears apart a country with all-round devastation: carnages waged,/the delights of countless wives/subdued;/numerous men/lost their sight:/and many more maimed./ Lofty dreams crushed./Laps of mothers are empty now./... Our homes now better adorned/with the thorns of hatred;/... man is to breathe his last/in the smoke." 23. War is self-defeating, it is fraud, declares Gill, and wonders "What is today's man." He can't understand the puzzle, the contradictions --- love for animals but hatred for humanity--perpetrated by the man of today.24 He pleads for love, harmony and peace, and knows peace cannot swim/on the blood waves./ For a happier future/let us build bridges now 25 , killing the serpent within "that vomits the lava of hostility"26.
In poem after poem Gill points to the continually deepening tribulations of people everywhere-- contentions and disputes, mutual deceits, sudden calamities, misery and distress, the convulsions of war, the spread of inveterate diseases, hunger and poverty, religious fundamentalism and fanaticism-- that have upset the world's equilibrium. To add to this, scientific advancement has made human being "a prisoner of chaotic nights." He develops the feelings of withdrawal from the world of violence and fanaticism in his poem "Me"27. Increasing withdrawal from the world has inflamed a self-loving, shortsighted tendency, creating a globe where the only certainty is that nothing is certain. Upset over "pollution, panic, and poisonous civic life" and prospects of a third world war, the poet seeks refuge in his own "calming womb/beyond the embraces of robots/and bursts of inhuman cries" that drives the dove of peace wild:
the urchins of stinking strife-
and dusty pride in the march
of technology and science.28
and
Science would write
the last chapter
and religious bigotry
shall provide the title
to the last dance on the hills
inhabited by the children
of racial insanity.
The clouds shall rage
to bear witness.29
He pities people who are proud of fiddling with noxious gases/and of raining/virus and fire/to deface our mother-earth but who are not proud of a single aircraft/accidentfree/to ensure our travels/carefree". 30
Gill looks for poet-philosophers whose voice is "mightier than cannons" just as the promoter of universal brotherhood condemns the "fanatic mind" which is born of ignorance and is "death's cradle".31 In his disappointment, Gill, seeker of the global peace, prays to God : Give us wisdom/not to uproot our orchard./The earth./Thy footstool,/enlivens all/o Lord/.... /Give us now/a gown of humility/to wear/water of tranquillity/to drink/..32
The seeker in him considers war, for whatever reason--political, economic, racial, ethnic, religious-- a derision of the Creator, who cares for everyone and reveals the secret of undisturbed peace. Since "the worship of violence ... leads to the temple of hatred," he urges people and governments not to rest on their political power, economic strength or armies but to follow the path of justice and promote the highest interests of the whole of humanity.
A Search For Elysium
Gill turns to poetry to search for unity in the multiplicity of cultural norms. He tries to assimilate cultural diversity to explore himself and discover his own creative tissues:
The womb of life
fabric of civilizations
author of prosperities
mirror of wisdom
sonata of Peace.33
For him genuine poetry is an antidote to suffering, which he can transform "into nutrients" with divine grace. As he prays: "Display in them/Your will;/fuse them with Your beauty".34 The poet has a strong faith in poetry :
I wish my poetry to be friendly
to pacify the tiger of violence
and to assemble flowers of all hues
into a single bouquet.35
As a potent voice of humanity, he warns his readers about the looming disaster which will befall humankind if the present generation does not take concrete measures to maintain world peace and harmony. He believes that Humans have to change/demons to go, and/rusted fetters to break/before the glory of harmony/stretches soothing wings/over the decaying orchards,..36
The poet looks for the ambrosia that can instill corpuscles of love and tolerance into the masses whose leadership indulges in internecine struggles. His poetic cult is the cult of humanity which reverberates with universal love, manifesting itself in the form of devotion through self-abandoning supplication, through love for nature, through love for the beloved, and through commitment to peace and harmony.
Gill's poetry is, in fact, an embodiment of philosophy as much based in Hindu metaphysics
as it is founded on Christian faith. The poems echo oriental philosophy in that they make the readers turn inward in search of the meaning of existence. It's only through knowing one's own self one can understand the outer world and the society at large :
It was on the crossroad of desires
where I met Me.
Looking into my eyes,
He shook my hand at that cold moment
and then dissolved slowly
like evening
in a crowd of strange faces.
In his silent sight
I perceived a glow
despair
and the joy of flying birds.
Under the brow of cloudy skies
those deep eyes
dropped the dew of innocence
on the wings of my guilt
which I carry still
while searching for Me.37
Christianity propagates love for humankind through broadening one's outlook and realising the presence of God in one's being. In search of love one need not look outside because it lies in abundance hidden in one's own self. The presence of this divine love should be realised through cultivating a harmonious feeling for fellow beings. In one of his poems he says:
I live in your veins
your blood is my abode
I am the love,
search your heart.38
Sometimes his poems sound like the sacred utterances of a devotee madly in love with his goddess in the tradition of Mirabai and Jaidev : "Your smiles emitted might/the blue eyes gave sign/I called you shrine"... 39
His love for the beloved and Nature often swap places. Whenever in dismay, he longs to see her face:
A melody
that I die to hear
from my window of dismay
when down goes the sun
is your face.40
For him the moon, dew, flame, rain, rainbow, etc. are life-giving sources, the blessed and positive aspects of life that carry cells of love in their veins, i.e the "elysian charm" or "God's wonder." He wants to submit himself to this eternal source of joy. In fact he wants his love to culminate in joy. Even in the face of unhappiness, cruelty and disillusionment, the poet in Gill wants to be rejuvenated by the grace of love, which he seeks "not in dreams/and the thoughts in solitude" but "along the serene self-composed clouds".41 Some of his poems smack of several classical Indian poets who metaphorically compared their lady-love with the 'mountains', 'buds', 'seas' and 'sun's rays' or as distraught lovers moan:
Abandoning all,
I longed to kiss
your lips;
frozen indifferent
they kept me afar.42
Stephen Gill seeks to realise his love in "a sinking star of the morning" even as his lady love might not bear the "majesty of oceans" or "the secret of fragrance," or "the pride of youth" or "the beauty of the moon." Aware of the fleeting nature of time as he is, Gill faces the reality of life and death, hope and dismay, gain and loss with a sense of equanimity: "Under the ashes of the last night/half-dead embers glow again/while thieving time passes by."43
The poet dreams a life that, against all odds and limitations, shall give him all he desires. The "Elysian gleams" or the "Elysian charm" he looks for in his experiences are in fact indicative of an attitude, which is positive, constructive, and humane, with an understanding of the discordant reality of life, especially greed, hunger, pollution, and war. He seeks to live in the "dignity of hills/vision of heaven"44 to counter his aloneness. As he imagines romantically :
I shall build a cabin there
with the stuff simple
sleep there as I wish
awake to music serene
attuned one with nature.
I shall hibernate somewhere
in a lonely, unvisited spot
amidst the Elysian bounties
embracing peace surpassing all.45
The idealist in Gill expresses a longing for the Elysian fields free from social, political, territorial, moral, ethnic and ecological pollution. He dreams of a world where people would harmoniously co-exist forgetting petty discrimination on the basis of caste, race, colour or nat 00004000 ionality and would love each other accepting individual differences. This love would metamorphose humans by healing and bestowing upon them the power to heal. Professor Dr. Frank M. Tierney, supports this view when he says:
"But there is in Tennyson's poems and Mr. Gill's volume a hierarchy of values. The first and most important is, as John Henry Newman insisted, 'growth from within.' This growth requires spiritual priority. This principle leads man to personal, national and international harmony through an understanding that comes from love".46
In one of his letters to the editor, Stephen Gill confirms this view : "I believe in the Being who is all-love, nothing but unconditional love. Realization of this type of love opens doors to the fount of tolerance of the views and practices of others, and ought to dispel the clouds of terror which hide the sun of peace."47
Conclusion
Gill's poetry testifies to his inner need to live more deeply with greater awareness, to know other's experience and to know his own experience well. He recreates situations and experiences that are significant and focused to derive a better understanding of the contemporary world. He broadens and deepens experiences, using language as an instrument of persuasion and as an aid to living in a world which is self-destructive. His purpose is to arouse and awake, to shock one into life, to make one more alert and responsive to the happenings around, to make one more alive.
Stephen Gill is a poet of values-- universal peace and love, oneness and wholeness of the human race, respect for human rights, and a social structure designed to produce and promote justice. The poet, who considers his poems part of his spiritual self, urges abolition of racial, religious, political and economic prejudices and seeks equal opportunities and privileges for men and women, adoption of a world code of human rights and responsibilities, and creation of a world federal government to heal the dissensions that divide people. He knows religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire whose violence none can quench. God alone can deliver humanity from this desolating affliction. Gill's principal concern is to rescue the ignorant or fallen people from the slough of impending extinction. Features like post-modernist self-understanding, sense of doubt, despair, uncertainty, futility, rejection of European/American dominance and assertion of individuality are some of the hallmarks of his creativity. Dr. Rochelle L. Holt, an eminent American poet, put it in this way: "Yes, love is the answer to the questions-- why no peace? It's as simple as that, but Confucius say : 'Simplicity is the last thing learned. It comes from simple thinking, not from the conscious attempt to be simple."48
As an ethnic writer and poet, Stephen Gill enriches the mosaic-tapestry of Canadian culture and values with his Indian background and Asian learning. The immigrant sensibility of the novelist Gill extends into the poet Gill, whose creative negotiation absorbs the conflict of cultures without being bitter: A crusading idealism overwhelms him with the emotions of love and tolerance just as his missionary zeal is a reflection of the utopian state he fervently desires to achieve through aesthetic endeavour. The poet strives to make "society more rational and more friendly" to promote brotherhood; he loves the world and dedicates himself to the service of the entire human race.
FOOTNOTES
1 Gill, Stephen. "Blind and Deaf" Gypsy 17, 1991. p.62
2 ---------------. "A New Canadian in Toronto," Star India, July 9, 1993, p.15.
3 --------------.The Flowers of Thirst. Vesta, Canada, 1990, p. 88.
4 Gill, Ibid., p. 84.
5Gill, Stephen. The Dove of Peace. 2nd Ed. New York, USA, MFA Press, 1993, p. 27.
6 Gill, Stephen. Songs For Harmony. New Jersey (USA), Rose Shell Press, 1993, p. 13
7Gill. Ibid., 55.
8Gill. Ibid. 48.
9Gill. "An Immigrant Complains", al-mohajer, issue 1, Jan. 1994.
10Gill. Songs for Harmony. p. 19.
11Gill. The Dove of Peace. p.48.
12Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p.96.
13Gill. The Dove of Peace. p. 37
14Gill. Divergent Shades. Writers Forum, Ranchi, India, 1995, p. 47.
15Gill. "On the New Year," Seaway News, Dec. 28. 1994. p.2
16Gill. "Beelzebub of Demands," From Both Sides of the Ocean, January-February, 1995, p.23.
17Gill. Ibid. p.23.
18Gill. "To Humanists," Al-Mohajer, Issue 2-3, Feb.- March 1994.
19Gill. "Divided Humanity," From Both Sides of the Ocean, Jan/Feb. 1995, p. 11.
20Gill. "War-Mongers," Nirankari, Feb. 1996, p.16.
21Gill. "A Conversation," Conscience Canada, No. 60, Winter, 1994
22Gill, Stephen. Divergent Shades, p. 47
23Gill. The Dove of Peace, pp. 13-14
24Gill. Ibid. pp. 18-19
25Gill. Ibid. pp. 22-23
26Gill. Ibid. p.37.
27Gill. "Me", Des Pardes, Fall 1993, vol 5, No. 5.
28Gill. The Dove of Peace. p. 48.
29Gill. "Last Dance", Twilight Ending, vol.2, May 1996, p. 21.
30Gill. The Dove of Peace. p. 15.
31Gill. The Dove of Peace. pp. 49-50
32Gill. The Dove of Peace. pp.52-53
33Gill. Songs For Harmony. p.27.
34Gill. Songs For Harmony. p.9.
35Gill. Songs For Harmony. pp. 11-12.
36Gill. Songs For Harmony. p. 27
37Gill. "A Handshake", Graffiti Fish, Carleton University,
Vol. 2, No.1, Ottawa (Canada), 1995, p. 21.
38Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 16.
39Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 38.
40Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 20.
41Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 56.
42Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 24.
43Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 23.
44Gill. The Flowers of Thirst. p. 24.
45Gill. The Dove of Peace. p. 44.
46Tierney, Prof. Dr. Frank. "Reflections of An Indian
Poet", Canadian India Times, Nov. 15, 1973, p.5
47Gill. "Love and Only Love Will Stop the Bloodshed," Daily Standard-Freeholder, Aug. 5, 1994, p.4.
48Holt, Rochelle. "A Call For Love", The Pilot, USA, June 20, 1992.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS :
*Who's Who in The Commonwealth, International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, England;
181-glimpses
*Immigrants We Read About by George Bonavia, International Production, Ottawa ;
*Who's Who In Canadian Literature, Reference Press, Toronto, Canada
*Ethnic & Native Canadian Literature : A Bibliography by John Miska, University of Toronto Press ;
*Something About The Author, vol. 63, Gale Research, USA;
* Hines,George, Ph.D. Stephen Gill & His Works (an evaluation). Introduction by Dr. John Robbins, former Ambassador to the Vatican, and President of Brandon University, Vesta, 1982
ARTICLES:
-Drake, Bobbie. "Flowers of Thirst", INDIA GLOBE, June 20, 1992
-Gamble, Rick. "Literature Said Vital Force For World Peace", THE EXPOSITOR, Sept. 8, 1976
-Gaur, June. "Beyond Personal History: Zulfikar Ghose's Confessions of A Native Alien", THE LITERARY CRITERIONS. vol XXX1, N0.l & 2, 1996, page 64.
-Heward, Burt. "Newcomer to Canada," CITIZEN, Apr. 12, 1977, p.37
-Holt, Dr. Rochelle L. "Dove of Peace As a Call For Peace," THE PILOT, Jan. 20, 1992
-Koch, Terry. "Ideas Don't Report To Customs", AT YOUR LEISURE, Apr. 9, 1978
-Marshall, Valerie. "Writing Time Important For Local Writer- Poet, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER,
-Nahal, Chaman. The New Literatures in English. New Delhi : Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1985.
-Parthasarathy, R. Rough Passage. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977, page 17.
-Penny, Margaret. "Time is True Test For Writer's Ability", STANDARD-FREEHOLDER, Oct. 19, 1976
-Parakot, Manjula. "Interesting Indians", THE CANADIAN INDIA TIMES, Nov. 18, 1976, p.9
-Shukla, Rajesh. "Peace & Understanding In Gill's Reflections & Wounds", CHRISTIAN MONITOR, Oct. 2, 1981, pages 6-7
-Singh, Pritam. "Little Punjab in Canada--Stephen Gill", ADVANCE, June 1990, p.14
-Tierney, Professor Dr. Frank. "Reflections of An Indian Poet", CANADIAN INDIA TIMES, Nov. 15, 1973, p.5
First published in The Mawaheb International (Canada),
June 1998
