Theme - Memory

• Memory


  Poets use their own experience to give readers an understanding of what happened during history, and it acts as a way to invite the reader to consider their own point of view on the subject
• Poems explored

  • The Emigre by Carol Rumens
  • Remains by Simon Armitage
  • Poppies by Jessie Ware
• The Emigre


  • Reflects on a time spent growing up in a city abroad, with happy but childlike memories
  • Struggles to accept that the place has become a place of tyranny and violence
  • Rumens uses light and dark imagery to separate the speaker's thoughts and feelings of her old and new home
• The speaker in The Emigre

  Struggles to come to terms with the real reason she had to leave as an adult, and is finding it difficult to break the positive memories she has as a child
• Remains

  • The soldier speaking is suffering PTSD and fighting negative images of his time in Iraq or Afghanistan
  • The memories have a restless effect on him, with flashbacks that disturb even his sleep
  • Highlights the lack of support for soldiers struggling with mental health issues upon returning home
• Poppies

  • Details a mother's experience watching her son leave for the war
  • The memory of the day he leaves is softer and more positive compared to the military side of her son
  • The mother cannot begin to relate to the horrors her son will probably see, whereas the memories in Remains detail the horrors the soldier witnessed
• If memory were to come up as a theme in an exam-based situation, remember to select the poem that links well to memory and anchor your points from there