English Lit - The Emigree

• Carol Rumens was born in 1944 in London, she is a poet, lecturer and translator who has lived in Belfast and Wales and traveled widely in Russia and Eastern Europe
• The poem "The Emigre" is from Rumens' 1993 collection "Thinking of Skins: New and Selected Poems"
• The poem is filled with arresting imagery and symbolism, and has syntactically complex and long sentences
• The poem explores political consciousness and the experience of leaving one's homeland
• The poem does not name the specific country or city, making it applicable to many who have left their homelands
• The lack of specificity in the poem

  Allows it to apply to many people who have left their homelands
• The poem


  • Is written in free verse with no rhyme or regular rhythm
  • Has enjambment where sentences carry over to other lines
  • Has a lot of caesura (punctuation within lines)
• The structural features of the poem


  Reflect the chaos and lack of power the speaker feels, but also her attempt to impose order
• Sunlight


  An image of happiness and positivity that recurs throughout the poem
• The repeated image of sunlight


  Shows the speaker's passionate love for the place, which overpowers the negativity and danger
• Personification of the city

  • The city is given human attributes, like coming to the speaker, lying down, taking the speaker dancing - showing the depth of the speaker's love for the place
• The poem can be compared to the power of nature in extracts from The Prelude