Speaker

The poem “Remember the Ship” by John Agard has a speaker who uses the first-person pronouns “I” and “we” to refer to himself. The speaker of the poem is most likely John Agard himself. 

The speaker appears to be an immigrant. He calls himself a “citizen of the English tongue” (ll. 1-2), which shows that both his home country and the country he has immigrated to have English as their main language. John Agard was born in Guyana (at the time named British Guiana, as it was a British colony) and later immigrated to the United Kingdom. 

The speaker also worries whether race will be something that will interfere with him being accepted in a new country. This shows that he is a person of color who is going to a country that is most likely predominan...