Literature

This portrait speaks louder, not in volume, but in rhythm. The title alone places us in a field of cultural tension and vitality. Patois is not just a dialect; it is a claim. Once marginalised, once coded, now absorbed and reabsorbed into the mainstream. What began in Caribbean homes and music halls now lives in urban youth culture, in grime lyrics, in playground slang, in WhatsApp voice notes.

Sometimes beautiful. Sometimes threatening. Always alive.Here, though, we are met by an elderly man. His expression is gentle. Unbothered. Reclaiming. This is not a portrait of power in the conventional sense. It is a quiet act of cultural stewardship. He is not performing youth, nor nostalgia. He is holding his language with its cadences, its code-switches, its complexities as something worth protecting.

The colours are bold, but not chaotic. Wright's palette honours vibrancy without parody. We are not asked to decode this man's politics. We are simply asked to see him as someone who holds within him the histories of migration, adaptation, and expression that shape modern Britain.