The Emigrée

Who was “The Emigrée” written by?

Carol Rumens

What is the context of The Emigrée?

• The poem is contained in the 1993 collection “Thinking of Skins” which has a focus on the relationship between identity and culture

• Links to the modern day refugee crisis

• People analysing Rumens’ work have suggested that she has a “fascination with elsewhere” - an idea that crops up in much of her writing. This is shown in The Emigree because the speaker longs to be “elsewhere”

What is the structure of The Emigrée?

• Repetition of “they” creates an aggressive and accusatory tone to make the city seem threatening and hostile. This reflects the aggression aimed at her from the citizens of her new city due to their racism. It shows she is experiencing a new threat which is no longer physical conflict but social rejection; she feels she does not belong in her new city as she does not share their culture and identity

• The poem act as an extended metaphor for a lost childhood

• Predominantly in free verse with no rhyme scheme or rhythm, representing the chaos and lack of control over a country with no stable government

What other poems can you compare “The Emigree” to?

• Kamikaze (Power of memory)

• Poppies (Loss and absence)

• Checking Out Me History (Identity)

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

• The poem starts like a children’s fairy-tale, in the style of ‘once upon a time’. This could be a motif for childhood, ironically as the story that follows describes harsh adult experiences. This initiates the theme of childhood in the poem, conveying how the picture constructed in her mind of the un-named state she’s originally from was formed through a lens of innocence and naivety.

• She doesn’t provide information on which country she left or where she fled to. This suggests she intended the poem to have a universal application; the story of the struggles of all refugees.

• She would have had no control of her fate; one assumes her family was forced to leave. So as a child and as a refugee she was doubly helpless. The verb ‘left’ offers no insight as to why or how she moved. Perhaps the speaker wanted to focus on the beauty of her country rather than the distressing circumstances that forced her out.

• There is also enjambment here. The last word before the line is cut off is ‘child’, possibly symbolic of how the speaker’s childhood was cut short.
  Alternatively, the speaker may have wanted to hold on to her childhood, savouring her memory of it.

“I am branded by an impression of sunlight”

• The repetition of the word ‘sunlight’ suggests the speaker has an almost dream-like picture of the past or it could represent the speaker’s pride in her homeland – she is shining a light on her city.

• The country has ‘branded’ her. It has left marks on her. Metaphorically she is saying that she remembers only positive things. However, the word ‘branded’ could suggest that she has been physically disfigured by her experiences. It has also negative connotations of brandings inflicted on animals. It could also indicate that she has been branded by society as an outsider, maybe because the country she came from has expelled her.

“That child’s vocabulary I carried here…I can’t get it off my tongue.”

• She was a child, so the vocabulary she had learned was limited; she hadn’t acquired adult expression. Also, it could mean that she and those like her were banned from speaking their language; the only thing she knew that was her entire identity and way of communication. It suggests that her former home was a totalitarian state (a form of government that controls every aspect of individuals' lives) and freedom of speech curtailed.

• The language is so important and of value to the speaker that she can’t not speak it; it is always on her ‘tongue’ — another way of saying she can’t get it off her mind.

• Rumens finishes with a full-stop, one of the few in the poem, creating a pause or a caesura, to imply that the speaker has been silenced in the way the state silences her by banning her language.

“They accuse me of being dark in their free city”

• The use of dark contrasts with the white used earlier to describe her own city. It shows the turmoil within her; she feels she was not accepted in her previous home. Note the repetition of ‘they accuse me’ is menacing and threatening. The contrast of ‘dark’ and the earlier ‘white’ is, of course, a reference to racism.

• This may also refer to the city to which she has come. Many European and traditionally ‘white’ countries take in refugees from Asian, Africa and the Middle East. The society in her new country could be racist and xenophobic.

“My city hides behind me. They mutter death, and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight”

• These last two lines are ambiguous and seem to contrast to the tone of the rest of the poem. “They mutter death” seems to imply not just oppression from her former city, but evil and hatred. It’s as if there’s a darkness to her city that she doesn’t remember, or that she is trying to forget because she wants to maintain an image of utopia. She impresses this utopian idea upon herself in the last line- “my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.” She is the one in the wrong, not her city.

• Yet, despite the threat of death and the mention of “dark”, suggesting a threat to her well-being, the speaker ends the poem on a positive note, with the final last reference to ‘sunlight’. Her shadow represents the contrast between light and dark, proving the sunlight does exist, and she is evidence of that fact. Perhaps she feels she is a physical reminder of “the good ol' days”, and as long as she lives, so too does her idealistic view of her country.

• Another interpretation is she was killed for being an outcast and ‘they mutter death’ is her life sentence for speaking out. At the end when her ‘shadow falls’ it shows she was right all along and there was sunlight and this hints at a tone of regret and lack of freedom