The emigree

The experience presented does not reflect Rumen's own history - The poem explores a memory of the poet and the experiences in a far off city they spent time in as a child. The poet is looking through this city through the eyes of a child and the happy memories she had, she compares these to the truths she knows as an adult which is much harsher

Emigree relates to the word eimigrate - The idea that a person goes and settles in another country, sometimes not feeling welcome to return. The poet bases many of the 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

Exile: The speaker seems to be an exile from an unknown city. 'I have no passport/ 'there's no way back' Perhaps this mysterious and now unreachable city the speaker recollects is meant to represent the past, to which they can’t return to. A repeated comparison like this, which runs through the poem, is known as an extended metaphor.

News reports: Words and phrases associated with TV news bulletins used throughout. 'Worst news'/'Banned by the state' The vocabulary used throughout the poem depicts a war-torn country under the control of a brutal government. If the speaker’s memories are of childhood, perhaps these terms are meant to represent the harsh realities of the adult word.

Light and shade: References to sunlight is repeated all the way through. 'Bright filled paperweight' The repeated references to sunlight suggest the speaker has an idealised, almost dream-like picture of the past, where it is always sunny. However, the place is not as perfect as she remembers it and mentions of ‘dark’ and ‘death’ imply that things are not as ideal as her memories suggest. There is a sense that her relationship with the place may be threatening to her in some way.

The poem is composed of three stanzas -The first two stanzas are eight lines each and the last stanza has nine lines. Why there’s an extra line is unclear. Perhaps it suggests the speaker just can’t let go of the memories and just doesn’t want the poem to end?

The poem does not use rhyme, but there is a suggestion of a rhythmic pattern of five stressesto the line - Although this pattern never fully establishes itself as a regular rhythm. Perhaps this reflects the speaker’s state of mind, which though positive in many ways is also uneasy, unsettled and complex.

The language appears to be natural and without artificial devices, but this apparent plainness hides a large amount of figurative language

Rumens makes great use of metaphor -memories include ‘the bright, filled paperweight’; the city’s brutal tyrant rulers are a sickness; the speaker is ‘branded’ by sunlight; time ‘rolls its tanks’ and every word of a grammar is a ‘coloured molecule’. Perhaps the whole city is an extended metaphor,a symbol of the lost childhood to which no adult can return

Rumens also uses similes - 'frontiers rise between us, close like waves’ and ‘That child’s vocabulary I carried here/ like a hollow doll’. Rumens’ use of simile (and metaphor) perhaps suggests the way in which the speaker is shaping her memories and making up her own narrative about her relationship with her homeland.

The city is personified - Rumens perhaps makes a play on words when she describes it flying to her ‘in its own white plane’. As well as an aeroplane, a secondary meaning of ‘plane’ as something flat and level, may suggest a sheet of white paper. The poet may be teasingly suggesting that her city exists only in her poem and is an imaginary place. The fairytale like personification further adds to this sense of unreality.

Interpretation of the line: ‘It may by now be a lie, banned by the state / but I can’t get it off my tongue.’ 

The émigrée is beginning to remember a long-forgotten language that has perhaps been suppressed by those who now rule the city. The speaker describes recalling ‘that child’s vocabulary’ and compares it to a ‘grammar’ that spills out like the stuffing inside a doll. The speaker will soon remember every word of this language - ‘every coloured molecule of it’.

The speaker knows this is all sentimental nostalgia, but just can’t help indulging in it.The speaker is remembering a simple ‘grammar’ and highly coloured language of childhood. However, the speaker acknowledges that this ‘child’s vocabulary’ may no longer be appropriate to an adult or ‘banned by the state’. There’s a suggestion the speaker is wallowing in childhood memories.

Interpretation of the whole poem

This is a poem about childhood and adulthood.The city walls ‘accuse’ the speaker and there’s a sense of guilt that the city has been abandoned. All the idealised details - the sunshine and prettiness the speaker imagines - suggest a yearning for a vanished world. The speaker admits they are unrealistic - ‘The worst news I receive of it cannot break/ my original view’ - but is overcome by nostalgia.

This is a poem about childhood and adulthood. The city is never identified and Rumens keeps it mysteriously unknown. In this way, it can stand for any place that anyone once loved. As we age we are all, in a sense, exiles from the land of our own childhood; a land that’s filled with bright, unreachable memories. Time only makes the memories in the poem ‘glow even clearer’, much like how memories of early childhood can become idealised.