The Émigrée
What it's about
by Carol Rumens is spoken by someone who left her home city as a child. The city may now be at war or ruled by tyrants, but in her memory it is still bright and full of sunlight. She loves it as if it were a person.
The country is never named, so the poem could be about any refugee. It was published in 1993. An émigrée is a woman who has left her own country, often for political reasons.
Key terms
The city as a remembered person
The poem opens like a fairy tale: ‘There once was a country’. Her memory of it is perfect: ‘my memory of it is sunlight-clear’.
She knows it may now be dangerous, that ‘it may be sick with tyrants’, but bad news cannot change her memory.
Rumens the city as a child or lover: ‘I comb its hair and love its shining eyes’. The city even comes to her, to take her dancing. Her love is tender and protective, as if the city depends on her.
Key terms
Form and structure
The poem has in free verse, and each one ends with the word ‘sunlight’, so the positive memory keeps returning, however dark the poem becomes.
In the last stanza, the mood changes. People who don't trust her surround her: ‘They accuse me of absence, they circle me.’ She feels threatened and out of place.
Even so, the poem ends on hope: ‘My shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.’ Her memory, like her shadow, proves the bright city once existed.
Themes and comparisons
memory; identity and belonging; the effects of conflict and tyranny; exile.
- : memory and someone cut off from home.
- Checking Out Me History: identity and where you belong.
- Tissue: borders and the places people call home.
Exam tip
Write about how the speaker's memory is more powerful than the present reality. That idea links to many other poems in the cluster.