Emigrée

Question 1

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

but my memory of it is sunlight-clear”

Answer 1

• Rumens’ opening line establishes a fairy-tale quality to highlight the fact that the speaker’s home is described as a memory rather than reality.
• The memory is “sunlight clear” but is romanticised by the idealism of youth, and establishes the key theme of the unreliability of memory.

Question 2

“The worst news I receive of it cannot break

my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.”

Answer 2

The speaker claims nothing can diminish the innocence, child-like memories of home, a metaphorical “bright paperweight”, but accepts there may be a disconnect between her memory and her home country’s present reality.

Question 3

“That child’s vocabulary I carried here

like a hollow doll…”

Answer 3

• The poet explores the speaker’s struggle to reconcile her past with her present, highlighting the internal conflict between the innocence of childhood memories and the complexities of adulthood.
• The language she left with had nothing of substance, as the simile “like a hollow doll” suggests.

Question 4

“I have no passport, there’s no way back at all

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

Answer 4

The speaker has travelled from her home city and has no way of returning, but instead her city comes to her in the form of innocent memories and nostalgia, represented by the colour white.

Question 5

“I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.”

Answer 5

Through personification, the poet portrays the speaker’s deep affection for her homeland, transforming it into a cherished companion, symbolising the longing for connection and belonging amidst feelings of alienation and displacement.

Question 6

“They accuse me of absence, they circle me.

The accuse me of being dark in their free city.”

Answer 6

• The speaker feels trapped, persecuted and different in her new city, and Rumens uses the pronoun “they” to signify “otherness”.
• No specific cities or countries are mentioned, creating a sense of the universality of the conflicts and difficulties emigrants can experience when forced to leave their homes.

Question 7

“My city hides behind me. They mutter death,

and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight”

Answer 7

Through symbolism, the poet illustrates the speaker’s protective stance towards her homeland, portraying it as a source of strength amidst external threats and hostility.