The Emigree

Question 1

There once was a country… I left it as a child

Answer 1

• Ellipses, creates a caesura, indicating flashback or exploration of past memories. A moment of thought.
• anecdote- idealistic view- fairytale stories

Question 2

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear

Answer 2

• Pathetic Fallacy, this concept of sunlight creates a positive image which juxtaposes her understanding as an adult.
• The sunlight may be a metaphor for how she only sees it in a positive light.

Question 3

which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.

Answer 3

Aside, draws distinction between experience and what the speaker has heard.

Question 4

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.

Answer 4

• Metaphor, the idea of the city as a souvenir, shiny and unrealistic. Shallow as her childhood memories.
• Metaphor for how the happy thoughts are keeping her connected to the city she once loved, weighed down on it.

Question 5

It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,

Answer 5

• Personify the city to create the sense that it has been infected but can recover, almost hopeful yet deluded idea.
• She doesn’t outright say it’s at war which represents the idea that she wants to hold onto her idealistic views

Question 6

but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.

Answer 6

• Connotation branded often conveys sense of marked for wrongness, repetition of sunlight.
• “impression” implies it doesn’t feel like the exact thing but its the best she’s going to get.
• The memories left an imprint on her.

Question 7

The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes

Answer 7

• Connotation, of innocence and purity- idealistic views

- assonance

Question 8

glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks

Answer 8

• Personify, time to emphasises its relentless and destructive nature.
• her idealistic views get clearer and her realistic views fade.

Question 9

and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.

Answer 9

• Juxtaposes, aggressive imagery ’frontiers’ with the purity of nature ‘waves’.
• simile- barrier

Question 10

Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.

Answer 10

Metaphor, linking the memory of the city with tiny traces, to emphasise the value and preciousness of the memory.

Question 11

but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.

Answer 11

• Synaesthesia, the blur between taste and vision, the jumbling of senses in order to show the confusion of memories and emphasises with repetition the clearly flawed but joyous nature of the memory.
• The joy of speaking her language.

Question 12

but my city comes to me in its own white plane.

Answer 12

Personify, expanding the metaphor, perhaps suggesting that others have also fled, bringing with them the culture of her ‘city’ the ‘white’ links to this surreal and innocent quality.

Question 13

It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;

Answer 13

Metaphor, emphasises the open and emptiness but also the vulnerability.

Question 14

I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.

Answer 14

Personify, she treats the memory with almost child like tenderness, reflects her own memories of childhood linked to the city.

Question 15

My city takes me dancing through the city

Answer 15

The reconciling with her past memory and current understanding, though her past she tries to view the present. Her past city identified as ‘dancing’ the modern one as with ‘walls’ Juxtaposing identities.

Question 16

They accuse me of being dark in their free city.

Answer 16

Repetition, of ‘accuse’ gives a sinister identity to the oppression of the new city

Question 17

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.

Answer 17

• Contrast, of darkness and light used to show the speaker coming to terms with the two separate identities.
• idealistic views

Question 18

Who wrote the poem?

Answer 18

Carol Rumens

Question 19

Talk about the poems context…

Answer 19

The poem explores the memory of the poet and their experiences in a far off city they spent time in as a child. The poet is looking at this city through the eyes of a child and the happy memories she had, she compares these to the truths she knows as an adult which is much harsher.
Emigree relates to the word emigrate, the idea that a person goes and settles in another country, sometimes not feeling welcome to return.
The poet bases many of the ideas on modern examples of emigration from countries like Russia or the Middle East where people are fleeing corruption and tyranny, or those countries change in their absence to some from of dictatorship.

Question 20

How does the poem fit in with idea of power and conflict?

Answer 20

The poem has a deep sense of conflict in terms of emotions and memory, the poet is torn between her childhood memory and her adult understanding. This also reflects in the form of the city itself today which has become a hostile totalitarian place. The concept of a city can be a metaphor for memories and growth in general, progression from childhood to maturity.

Question 21

Talk about the poems structure…

Answer 21

The poem follows a three stanza structure with repetitive elements such as the idea of ‘sunlight’. The opening of the poem seems to encompass the speaker trying to capture the memory, the second stanza builds on the details of this, fleshing out the city in her mind, finally the poem seems to veer towards an idea of facing up to the modern dark place her city of memory has become. A large amount of imagery is used within the poem to try and capture the concept of the city, including personification, though much of this is deliberately vague.
The poem does not have a particularly consistent structure or any use of rhyme, this perhaps encapsulate the still uncertain understanding of the speaker about her city, this is further enhanced by some of the unusual and unnatural links between ideas and choice of metaphors. The poem uses enjambment to create a flowing pace to the work of a narrative speaker.

Question 22

Key points…

Answer 22

• The speakers view of the city is idyllic and with confused metaphors linked with positive natural images.
• The speaker is struggling to reconcile the two identities of the city, however this causes conflict within the speaker.
• The city is personified as reflects the nature of herself, her own personality and growth.

Question 23

Themes…

Answer 23

Reality of conflict
Loss and Absence
Identity
Individual experience

Question 24

That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.

Answer 24

part of her original language is still inside her connecting her to this place.