• Dispossessed of culture
• Exiled from homeland
• Problems with identity
• Anonymity of migrants (they were statistics)
• Barriers to assimilation

Poems

•  Migrant hostel
• Crossing the Red Sea

There is a feeling of uncertainty about the future and this is reflected in the transitory stage of the composer’s early life. This is evident in the long period of time spent at the migrant hostel and the uncertainty about when the family would leave for their new home. The responder also feels the uncertainty in the much longer poem of Crossing the Red Sea, with the different stages of the voyage marked out clearly.

The poet uses sustained imagery of birds throughout the set poems. For example, “Like a homing pigeon” is a forceful simile suggesting the natural instinct of birds to gravitate towards what is familiar. In this instance, it is the “accents” of people speaking the same language. But at the same time the migrants are partitioned off at night by “memories of hunger and hate”.

The anonymity of the migrants is suggested in Migrant hostel in the following lines: “No one kept count/ Of all the comings and goings”.

Barriers to settling in to their new country and way of life are represented in both of these poems. One image that shows this is the pointing finger that “Pointed in reprimand or shame;” where both nouns “reprimand” and “shame” have negative and derogatory connotations. The responder feels the sense of the small boy (the poet) being pointed at and being humiliated for being a migrant

The other barrier is the Equator, marking the boundary between the northern and southern hemispheres. This well-known imaginary line represents both a physical change and an enormous cultural change. Its rich red colour, “A blood-rimmed horizon signifies both the heat and intense atmosphere, as well as the personal anguish and suffering of the immigrants.

There is an entirely different voice in the poem Crossing the Red Sea. The imagery is of “shackles”, “sunken eyes”, ”secrets” and “exiles”, showing people who are leaving their homeland in disgrace, as if they are running away. It is very tortured, but more descriptive and less personal in its tone than Migrant hostel. Images from the lines “Patches and shreds/ Of dialogue” also give the responder an idea of the worn out clothes of the immigrants.

• Assimilation to a new culture
• Barriers

Poems

• Feliks Skrzynecki
• 10 Mary Street

Feliks Skrzynecki is a tribute to the composer’s father. It was written for him. Feliks was an independent man who was a survivor: “but I’m alive”. He did not try to do or buy whatever his neighbours did, as shown in the lines: “Kept pace only with the Joneses/ Of his own mind’s making”.

There is a blend of child-like language in this poem, together with the adult perspective. The child’s view can be found in the lines ”Ten times around the world” and “Why his arms didn’t fall off”. At the end of the poem is the statement/ concept that shows both the perspective of the father, and of the adult son: “like a dumb prophet,/ Watched me pegging my tents/ Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall”. The father knew that his son was growing up differently, moving away from the father’s culture, but he also was wise enough to know that he couldn’t do anything about it. He could not prevent his son from becoming assimilated.

In 10 Mary Street the humdrum of day-to-day existence is expressed in the repetition of time “for nineteen years”. This is the rhythm and routine of new life “with paint guaranteed” and it suggests the introduction of a new culture, a more materialistic culture than the old world they had known in Europe.

The house key lies under a rusty bucket but the image of the key is most significant in the last three lines: “Inheritors of a key/ That’ll open no house/ When this one is pulled down”. The key to the nineteen years is a happy harmonious home, where the persona learned to leave behind his new identity and accept the old one. This is a very nostalgic poem about the way it was in Australia in the 1950s. Once again there was the barrier, the “still too-narrow bridge” that separated the Australian world from that of Poland. The use of the colloquial phrase “like bursting at the seams” reinforces the sense of change and assimilation.

• Search for an identity: Who am I?

Poems

•   Post card
• 10 Mary Street

In the first section of Post card Skrzynecki conveys impersonal tone by using the third person. This is contrasted with the second section of the poem where he addresses the town as an old friend. It suggests an intimacy with Warsaw that the poet doesn’t have.

At the same time, there is a personal approach in the first section. The post card “haunts” him and he needs to show it to his parents. The persona’s dilemma comes with the rhetorical question: “What’s my choice to be?” And this is followed with the lines: “What more/ Do you want/ Besides/ The gift of despair?” The despair is brought about because of the persona’s dilemma about where he belongs. The haunting is continued with the image of ”...You survived/ In the minds/ Of a dying generation/ Half a world away.” Look at the possible meanings of dying- culture, physical?

In 10 Mary Street, Peter ravages the backyard garden while his parents tend it. They care for it “Like adopted children”, a very forceful simile. He was “like a hungry bird”. In the lines “For nineteen years / We lived together-

Kept pre-war Europe alive”, the persona does not seem to have been part of this. It appears to be expressed by an outsider.

Love/understanding/appreciation of parents and the trials they have experienced

Poems

• 10 Mary Street
• Feliks Skrzynecki
• Kornelia Woloszczuk

In 10 Mary Street he feels love and understanding from both parents. He is comfortable in his home, enough to ravage the garden anyway.

The personal pronoun “my” in Feliks S denotes a special relationship between the speaker and his subject. The adjective “gentle” helps to define the way the poet feels about his father. This adjective also sets the tone of the poem and reveals the poet’s perspective of his father as one of love and admiration.

In Kornelia a more frightening perspective is seen, perhaps because the poet believes that he has disappointed his mother. In the lines, “Having only one child/ Is like having/ One eye in your head” she is saying that it is better to have one child than no child at all. There is no doubt that the persona reveres his mother. “Walking/ Behind her” and “Nervous, uncertain/ Of distances and colours/ We pass through”, shows that he looks to her for approval, and is concerned he has failed her in whatever he has done. The lines.  “Her feet/ Make no imprint/ Upon the grass/ She treads” tell the responder that the persona looks to the woman in awe as if she is something sacred.

• Guilt; frustration
• Fear of isolation

Poems

• Kornelia Woloszczuk
• Chronic ward
• Post card

In Kornelia the use of rhetorical questions reveals the poet’s perspective of himself: his role as the son is frustrated-“Where did I go wrong”? The disturbed natural imagery “darkness of storms” conveys Skrzynecki’s view of his mother, in which war, alienation, immigration have all affected her, but they have had an impact on him too. This poem shows his distance from his mother. He desperately wants her approval but it comes forth only grudgingly in the final lines, when she says having one child is better than having none.

While Chronic ward seems to be different from the other poems in not being about migration, it is however similar in that it is associated with people alienated from society, the mentally ill. Whilst these people are locked away from “normal” society, this is also the way immigrants see themselves.

Post card presents a view of a man haunted by his cultural heritage. It disturbs him, yet invites him, in the final image of “We will meet/ Before you die.”