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Belonging: migration and displacement
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Four modern poems in the Belonging cluster explore leaving home, sometimes by force, and what we carry with us. These poems are still in copyright, so this lesson describes them in our own words. Use your anthology for the exact words you quote in the exam.
What each poem is about
The Émigrée (Carol Rumens): the speaker left her home city as a child. She hears it is now ruled by tyranny and she cannot return, but in her memory it stays full of sunlight. She treats the city almost like a person she loves and protects, while she feels watched and accused in the new place she lives.
We Refugees (Benjamin Zephaniah): the speaker describes coming from many places damaged by war, persecution and disaster, where people are punished for ordinary things. The poem insists that anyone can become a refugee, sometimes very suddenly.
My Mother's Kitchen (Choman Hardi): the speaker imagines inheriting her mother's kitchen: a mismatched collection of plates, glasses and pots. Her mother has had to move home many times, so what cannot be passed on are the trees and gardens she left behind.
Themes and ideas
Forced displacement: Zephaniah and Hardi show people who had no choice about leaving.
Inheritance and loss: Hardi shows that objects can travel, but roots in a place cannot.
Shared humanity: the 'we' in We Refugees includes the reader and asks for empathy.
Context: Nichols was born in Guyana and moved to Britain in 1977. Rumens (born 1944) is an English poet. Zephaniah (1958 to 2023) was a Birmingham-born poet of Jamaican heritage. Hardi is a Kurdish poet who came to Britain as a refugee.
Good comparisons: Island Man with Hurricane Hits England (Caribbean memories in England), The Émigrée with Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan (a homeland seen from far away), We Refugees with Nothing's Changed (injustice).
Methods and how to write about them
The Émigrée: an extended metaphor of light and sunlight for memory; personification of the city; contrast between bright memory and dark threats; it ends with an image of her shadow as proof of the light she carries.
We Refugees: anaphora (repeated openings about where the speaker comes from); a list of injustices; inclusive pronouns ('we'); a repeated idea that we can all be refugees.
My Mother's Kitchen: lists of ordinary objects; shifts between future, present and past tenses; a final contrast between what she will inherit and what she never can.
To write well, compare how each poem ends: in the grey city, in shadow and light, in a shared 'we', or in loss.
Plan a comparison: how do Island Man and The Émigrée present memories of a lost home?
- Thesis: both speakers keep home alive in memory, but Nichols shows a real place slipping away each morning, while Rumens idealises a city she cannot return to.
- Point 1 (ideas): Island Man's memories come in dreams and fade; the Émigrée deliberately protects her memory.
- Point 2 (language): Nichols's colour and sound imagery of sea against traffic; Rumens's extended metaphor of sunlight.
- Point 3 (structure): Nichols's drifting lines and abrupt ending; Rumens's final image of light and shadow.
- Judgement: Nichols suggests home is hard to hold on to; Rumens suggests memory can be a defiant kind of home.
Answer: Both speakers carry home in memory. Nichols's drifting free verse lets the island fade as London's noise takes over, while Rumens's extended metaphor of sunlight makes memory a defiant, protected home that tyranny cannot reach.
Island Man: Caribbean dreams against London traffic. The Émigrée: a city of childhood kept full of sunlight. We Refugees: anaphora and 'we', anyone can become a refugee. My Mother's Kitchen: objects can be inherited, roots cannot.
The interactive lesson includes the diagrams for this topic.
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