A Childhood of Emigration: a Commentary on "Originally" by Carol Ann Duffy

Among the various structural and thematic elements, Debora Greger’s “West of Myself” provides a sense of nostalgia and reminiscence of the past. The poem illustrates how life and memory are not so easily remembered or taken. The speaker of the poem is dramatizing her inner conflict and chastising herself for the direction her life has taken and where she believes it will befall. The compelling force for the creation of the work might have been to express memories of living a life and reflection, looking at life from hindsight. The poem reveals where she once thought the right way in life was to go and where she now thinks the right way would have been.

Belonging is considered as a human need, providing individuals with a form of identity and offers security. The poem portrays an insight into the migrants facing separation from Australian society on arrival and thus are suffering from a lack of belonging to their new “home”. This separation from society is evident in the fourth stanza, where the composer makes reference to the visible, yet non-accessible highway. The quote “A barrier at the main gate, sealed off the highway” illustrates the separation between the migrants and contributes to the theme of loneliness and detachment from the rest of Australia. The simile “It rose and fell like a finger” continues this idea and refers to the boom gate isolating the migrants from the life outside of the neglected hostel. The personification of the boom gate as a “finger” implies that the migrants are controlled by human authority, diminishing their freedom and autonomy over their lives. This idea of uncertainty and disorientation is similarly expressed through the use of the motif of a bird. In both similes, “Like a homing pigeon, circling to get its bearings” and “We lived like birds of passage” a bird is used to convey the constant moving and unpredictability of their journey to safety. The use of “birds of passage” compares the migrants to migratory birds, it emphasises that they are constantly moving and are never

The understandings and diversities of each immigrant and their experiences underlies in a range of issues they encounter such as rights, freedoms, beliefs, power, entrapment etc… All of which are a common understanding when used in comparison towards the migrants lives using the poignant aspect of imagery and journey’s within the poem “Immigrants at Central Station, 1951”. The experiences and perceptive in this poem help perceive an understanding of the immigrants experiences towards the new world of which displays the integrity, emotion and suffering towards the new world and we as the readers are engaged into these aspects of life through trains, time, control and journeys.

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

Furthermore, poetry, and the personification of poetry, conversations with old friends and family, should not need a special occasion, rather it should “ride the bus” with patience for the stops before your own and the understanding of other’s needs before your own (line 13). You can also say the bus can represent the speed at which life passes you by and how easy it is to miss something if you are not paying attention, or even, that these missed moments have a poem to help you along your long journey home. With the use of

The use of simile in the last stanza ‘matchstick hands as pale as the violet stems they lived among’ is used to compare a frog to violet flowers, which are very delicate and easily broken. The innocence of childhood is painted through this visual technique as the narrator only sees the frogs being very delicate, but to the readers the simile also creates a vivid image of the condition of the ‘Frogs’/ the French. The use of first person helps to create a reminiscent tone about the narrator’s experiences, and further helps to stress the ideas of childhood innocence and the influence of war on children because the poem is written from a child’s perspective. The use of enjambment generates a conversational and personal tone, emphasizing to the readers the reality of the themes discussed throughout the poem. The use of symbolism of frogs as pets and also representing the French highlights the idea that adults saw ‘Frogs’ as insignificant or unworthy to speak about, whereas the children could not understand this adult thought, and they placed exemplary regard to the wellbeing of the

Furthermore, we have the use of first person, where the almost universal effect is to have an in-depth look into the character and their immediate response to a problem or dilemma. This poem no different, where in the first stanza we are ushered in with the use of anaphora in lines 2, 3 and 4 with the repetition of the word ‘’and’’. This specific use of anaphora is used to create the mindset and intelligible deduction of the traveller to the events and dilemma prescribed to him. Insofar as his immediate reaction be being presented with a choice. It shows his reaction of regret in that he is ‘’sorry he could not travel both’’ and explains what he wish he could do ‘’be two travellers’’ but also how he initiates his decision making process ‘’looked down one as far as I could’’. Also, the use of first person is used to connect with the reader, enforcing the affore-used notion that the reader substitutes their own personal truth into a positive

-Essay: 1300- 1500 words. ‘A sense of belonging is never permanent.’ Discuss in relation to TWO poems and TWO pieces of related texts.

In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

writing era. His poetry was inspired by his family’s history, a history full of abandonment,

Within many poems in “Experience” images of religion are juxtaposed to those of “dew” which represents materialism. This is used to show the corruptness of the images of the Church and religion as being simple and ever-present. Throughout the “songs of Innocence” there are not many ongoing themes, there is only one on-going theme, that of the Church being ever-present. In “Experience” many other themes are present, such as materialism, giving a more complex image.

They are living in a moment of revolution, of innovation, of speed and steam; and they are longing for returning to past ages where everything seems easier, like the Ancient Rome or Greece. But especially they are going to look for that innocence and purity in their inner souls, in something that everybody has had the pleasure to experience. For the Romantic poets childhood is vital, for they understood that the child has a wider overview of the world given that he has not lost the innocence that characterizes him; there is something magical, pure and divine in a child’s vision of the world and that is what the Romantics are longing

An analysis of poems discussing the different ideas of infancy and what infancy and childhood means to different people. The ideas of infancy vary across the poems from being a curse to the family to being a blessing from the heavens or even a key to break out of the boundaries set by reality. The poets use various literary devices such as metaphors, similes and different poem structure to convey the message that they carry. Each poem has its own viewpoint on infancy. On the whole four of the poems, “Infant Joy” –William Blake, “You’re” – Sylvia Plath, “Once upon a time” – Gabriel Okara and “Piano” by D.H. Lawrence all have a more positive view towards infancy whereas, “ Infant Sorrow” – William Blake and “Prayer before birth” – Louis MacNeice show a more pessimistic side towards infancy. Despite the fact that each poem has its own different point of view on the subject of infancy, they all seem to share one thought which is the fact that infancy represents innocence and in some cases a fresh start.

First of all, the overall experience of what it feels like to be an emigrant needs to be examined. To begin with, the poem’s imagery ostensibly describes what it is like to be an emigrant, albeit from the third party viewpoint of the reader, which initially suggests that emigrants are viewed as outsiders, set apart from the rest, and that they are also not quite settled in their new country. For example, the narrator notes, “So you have seen them / with their cardboard grips, / felt hats, rain- /cloaks,”