ON a chilly February Friday, while having chai with my neighbour, I bumped into Cheryl Antao-Xavier. I was on my way out when she pressed a book into my hands, telling me to enjoy the read.

Three months later I dusted it off to put down only after having finished reading all 83 pages. Dance of the Peacock A collection of poems won over my heart. Never mind if it did not win any awards.

Antao-Xavier, a native of Karachi, strives to explain in verse how being an ethnic minority has influenced her life and her poetry. 'This anthology has been 20 years in the making,' she says. 'I have been doing the dance of the peacock all my life, hoping to blend in, yet too proud of my ethnicity to deny it.'

She goes on to acknowledge that these poems were written while she was on the road to self-realisation.
There is also a defined theme that binds all 69 poems that make up the anthology 'I have always felt as an outsider looking in, whether in Pakistan, Bahrain or Canada. In Karachi I was the Catholic minority and in Canada I am the South Asian immigrant.' She does not shy away from calling her poems 'women-centric immigrant poetry'.

Written against the vivid backdrop of Pakistan, Antao-Xavier manages to weave along vignettes of the landscape one encounters while journeying into the heart of Pakistan.

From the rugged mountains in the North mentioned in 'Dawn on the Himalayas', her poetry meanders along the varied geographical terrain culminating in the delta region where the River Indus embraces the Arabian Sea.

If the ageless waters of the mighty Indus Could share its memories of old The endless tales of an ancient land
Would a glorious past unfold?

Through the ages, you've been an inspiration To the Sindhi, Baluchi and Pathan The spirit of life for body and soul
In a land that is now called Pakistan.

— 'Ode to the Indus'

A graduate of St. Joseph's College and a former resident of Nazimabad, Antao-Xavier was brought up by a single mother. Her father passed away when she was merely a child and the painful longing for him and the urge to visit his grave in Bahrain is brilliantly portrayed in the poem 'Daddy's Grave'

On a sweltering day in June We laid him to rest In an arid desert graveyard Not knowing that We'd never come again.

We took a plane and left that land And his grave was never visited.

Although she has been living in Canada for over 20 years, the racism that she encounters in the West still hurts her.

'The politically correct acceptance of immigrants hurts me even more. It is painful to be patronised by the majority and I think that is why a large chunk of my poetry is both women and immigrant-centric,' she says. 

Many hours were spent applying With my pared down resume Carefully stripped of former authority
And half of the many credentials Still the obstacles seemed to remain 'No Canadian experience' soon
became 'No relevant work experience.'

— 'Alas! O Canada!'

In the introduction Antao-Xavier confesses that her 'dance has been [for a] long time in rehearsal and has now begun in earnest.'

The anthology evokes the lay of the land she so fondly remembers but has no plans to return to. Dance of the Peacock makes for a witty and emotional reading experience.

Dance of the Peacock
(POETRY)
By Cheryl Antao-Xavier
In Our Words, Ontario
ISBN 978-0-9809932-0-2
83pp. Cdn $15.95