Grace Nichols, the "Speaker"
The speaker in the poem "Like A Beacon" is Nichols herself and she writes about her feelings for her new home of London versus her true home of Guyana. The poem tells us a great deal of information about Nichols; we learn she grew up in a Caribbean home with a mother she loves deeply, who cooked plantains and sweet potatoes, both traditional Caribbean foods. This is the speaker's comfort food. We also learn that at the time of writing the poem she is homesick and that this homesickness is prone to coming on suddenly. She can be engaged in something else when it hits her and she is compelled to leave and find a Caribbean food stand or restaurant so that she can purchase plantains and feel the security of home again.
We learn also that she has immersed herself in the culture of her new city and is a "culture vulture" in that she enjoys galleries and artistic pursuits. The pull of the gallery is not as strong as the pull of her memory and so we also learn from this that her new life in no way makes up for her old one and the way that she misses it.
There is also an element of secrecy, and the enjoyment of having a secret, in the poet. She keeps the plantains in her overcoat pocket, and they are secretly warming her against the cold night. This tells us that although she is giving the appearance of being happy and settled in her British life, she secretly yearns for her childhood and the comforts of home.
Cat
The speaker in the poem "Cat-Rap" is a domestic pussy cat who secretly wants to live on the edge. In the poem he implies that he has a secret life as a streetwise urban cat who raps and enjoys nightlife, but it is also possible that he is indeed as domestic as his owners believe him to be, but wants to be edgier and secretly wishes he was a rap star in one of his other lives. He has a cat-crush on Macavity the Mystery Cat from "Old Possum's Book of Cats" and his goal is to one day solve the mystery of Macavity's criminal nickname, the Hidden Paw. He aspires to evade the law and become a master criminal like Macavity and sometimes implies that this is something he has already accomplished. He also likes to pull the wool over his owners' eyes, pretending to be the cat they think he is whilst they are at home with him, but leading a double and secret life when they are not.
Forest
The character of forest is both a physical forest, and also a metaphorical one, representative of a young girl who seems to be in the midst of important secret keeping despite the actions of those around her who want to gossip and find out information from her. She is gentle and mellow and understands the importance of keeping secrets; in fact, this seems to be the only thing that is truly important to her and she is concentrating hard on remaining closed-mouthed, the final stanza of the poem much like a girl repeating to herself "keep secrets". She is yet another example of a character with secrets to keep.
