The Emigrée - Carol Rumens

There once was a country…

opening line

• poem opens like a fairytale

  • temporal deixis

    • ‘once upon a time’ - motif for childhood

    • naive, childlike lens of story

    • ironic as poem explores harsh, adult experiences

• ‘a country’

  • non-specific

    • poem representative of universal experiences - the struggle of all refugees

I left it as a child

• had no control over her fate

• family forced to leave

I have no passport, there’s no way back at all but my city comes to me in its own white plane

• shift from the practicalities of not having a passport, to the whimsical image of the personified city coming to her instead

• "white plane" represents a powerful, bright memory or a mental escape that allows her to connect with her city despite the lack of a physical passport

it lies down in front of me, docile as paper, I comb its hair and love its shining eyes

• personified city

  • the narrator is cast in a maternal light

    • aligns youth with the city, so she is perhaps associating her own childhood with the city

• ‘docile as paper’

  • contrast with line 6 - ‘paperweight’

  • at first city seems strong and unyielding, later described as more delicate and fragile due to abuse from tyrants in power