The Emigree

• Carol Rumens was born in 1944 in London, she's 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 poem's free verse structure, enjambment, and caesura


  Reflect the chaos and lack of power the speaker feels in the war-torn place they love
• The regular stanza lengths and the longest final stanza


  Suggest the speaker's attempt to impose order and refuse to be overcome by the negativity
• Imagery of sunlight


  • Represents the speaker's passionate love and positive impression of the place, overpowering the negativity
• Personification of the city


  Gives the city human attributes, showing the speaker's deep love for the place, like a romance
• The poem explores the power of place and the conflicting emotions between place and people in a war zone