Professor Dr. R.K. Singh
and Mitali De Sarkar
=======================================================================
A SEARCH FOR ELYSIUM
=====================================================================
*Appeared in The Mawaheb International (Canada),
June 1998
Like Shiv K. Kumar, Keki N. Daruwala and Arvind
Krishna Mehrotra, Stephen Gill was 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
Gill's 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, 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
nationality 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
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GLOBE, June 20, 1992
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"Literature Said Vital Force For World Peace", THE EXPOSITOR,
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Ghose's Confessions of A Native Alien", THE LITERARY CRITERIONS. vol XXX1,
N0.l & 2, 1996, page 64.
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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
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Local Writer- Poet, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER,
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Delhi : Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1985.
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University Press, 1977, page 17.
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Ability", STANDARD-FREEHOLDER, Oct. 19, 1976
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THE CANADIAN INDIA TIMES, Nov. 18, 1976, p.9
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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