The emigree

• The poem "The Émigrée" reflects on the speaker's memories of a city and the struggle to reconcile past and present identities
• The poem uses literary devices such as ellipses, pathetic fallacy, aside, metaphor, personification, connotation, synaesthesia, and juxtaposition
• The poem explores the memory of the poet and their experiences in a far-off city they spent time in as a child
• The poet is looking at this city through the eyes of a child and the happy memories she had, comparing them to the harsh truths known as an adult
• 'Emigree' relates to the word emigrate, the idea that a person goes and settles in another country, sometimes not feeling welcome to return
• The poet bases many ideas on modern examples of emigration from countries like Russia or the Middle East where people are fleeing corruption and tyranny, or those countries change in their absence to some form of dictatorship
• "..." - elipses

  • creates a caesura, indicating flashback or exploration of past memories
• The poem has a deep sesnse of conflict in terms of emotion and memory
• the speakers view of the city is idyllic and with confused metaphors linked with positive natural images
• "there once was a country..."

  • the opening makes it sound like a story, but it also suggests loss
• "sunlight-clear"

  • the memory is clear and happy
  • pathetic fallacy - this concept of sunlight creates a positive image which juxtaposes her understanding as an adult
• "bright filled paper weight"

  • metaphor suggests that the memory is bright and positive but also solid and fixed
• "they accuse me "

  • unclear who 'they' are
  • but they are menacing
  • repetition enforces their threat to the speaker
• "shadow falls as evidence to sunlight"

  • contrast - darkness and light - shows the speaker coming to terms with the two separate identities
• "i have no passport, there's no way back at all"

  • fist line of the last stanza - sounds hopeless
  • came to escape her country but is unsure of why they left
• nostalgia - the speakers positive memories of the city sare unwavering
• threat - there are suggestions that the city has been invaded or taken over by a tyrant , but the speaker chooses to ignore this.

  she is threatened by her new city, and seems to protect her old city
• The city is personified as being "sick with tyrants"

  The speaker is describing the city in human terms to emphasise the strength of the speakers love for it
• seems to encompass the speaker trying to capture the memory, the second stanza builds on the details of this, fleshing out the city in her mind, and finally, the poem seems to veer towards an idea of facing up to the modern dark place her city of memory has becom
• highlights the struggle of the speaker to reconcile the two identities of the city, causing conflict within the speaker
• Kamikaze pilots were expected to use up all their weapons and then suicide by flying into their targets as a final act of destruction
• The poem contrasts the narrator and daughter's voices to build a more personal and human tone to the poem as well as the pilot's story
• The poem shows the pilot's hope to avoid death, only to be 'dead' to his family
• The poem uses a range of fishing and sea-like language to show the conflict between nature and man, and how he tries to fight this
• Man versus nature is generally an easy way to show conflict with lots of personification and language devices to explore