The Emigrée & Kamikaze

This lesson pairs two poems that explore the tension between personal memory and external pressure. Rumens's The Emigrée presents a speaker who clings to a sunlit memory of her homeland despite political darkness, while Garland's Kamikaze tells the story of a Japanese pilot who turns back from a suicide mission, only to face a lifetime of shame. Both poems examine how individuals resist — or are crushed by — the power of ideology, community expectation, and memory.

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The Emigrée — Carol Rumens (1993)

Context

Fact	Detail
Poet	Carol Rumens (b. 1944)
Background	English poet with a deep interest in Eastern European politics and culture
Theme	Memory, exile, identity, the power of personal recollection vs political reality
Context	Written during a period of political upheaval in Eastern Europe (fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav Wars)
Form	Three stanzas of irregular length, free verse

Rumens writes about the experience of an emigrée (a woman who has emigrated, typically for political reasons). The poem does not name a specific country — it could be any homeland lost to war, revolution, or oppression. This universality is deliberate: Rumens is exploring the idea of exile and the power of childhood memory to resist political reality.

Examiner's tip: The accent on "Emigrée" is important — it marks the speaker as female and connects to the French/European tradition of political exile.

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Content Summary

The speaker left her homeland as a child. She remembers it as a place of sunlight and beauty, even though she knows it has since been overtaken by political darkness — "There once was a country... I left it as a child." The city she remembers has been "sick with tyrants" and the borders are "dark," but her personal memory refuses to be overwritten. She carries the city within her, bright and defiant, and it "tastes of sunlight."

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Key Quotes

Quote	Technique	Analysis
"There once was a country... I left it as a child"	Fairy-tale register	"There once was" echoes fairy tales — the homeland is both real and mythical, a place that exists in memory but may no longer exist in reality.
"but my memory of it is sunlight-clear"	Compound adjective / imagery	"Sunlight-clear" is luminous, warm, certain. Memory is presented as more vivid than reality.
"I am told it is now a place of massed bonfires"	Passive voice	"I am told" — the speaker receives information passively, from a distance. The "massed bonfires" suggest destruction, but the speaker has not witnessed this herself.
"I have no passport, there's no way back at all"	Declarative / isolation	A blunt statement of political exile — she is stateless, cut off from her homeland. "No way back" is absolute.
"but I am branded by an impression of sunlight"	Metaphor	"Branded" is violent — a mark burned into flesh. Yet what is branded is "sunlight" — something beautiful. Her identity is permanently marked by this positive memory, even though the branding metaphor suggests pain.
"My city takes me dancing"	Personification	The city is alive, joyful, active — it leads her in a dance. Memory is not passive nostalgia but an active, living force.
"They accuse me of being dark in their city"	Ambiguity	"Dark" could mean racially different (othered), morally suspect, or politically dangerous. "They" are unnamed — an oppressive, faceless authority.
"My city hides behind me"	Personification	The city shelters behind the speaker like a child — she protects her memory from those who would destroy it. The power relationship is reversed: the exile protects the homeland, not the other way round.
"It tastes of sunlight"	Synaesthesia	You cannot taste sunlight — the crossing of senses creates a vivid, almost magical quality. Memory operates beyond rational categories.

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Language Analysis

Light vs dark: The poem is structured around a battle between light (sunlight, the speaker's memory) and dark (tyrants, accusers, borders). The speaker's memory wins — the sunlight is inextinguishable.

Personification of the city: The city "takes me dancing," "hides behind me," and ultimately "comes to me." It is not a passive memory but an active presence — almost a living companion. This personification elevates personal memory to something sacred and resistant.

Resistance through language: The speaker's original language is a form of resistance — "I comb its hair and love its shining eyes." The language of the homeland is personified as a beloved child. To speak one's language is to keep the homeland alive.

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Form and Structure

Feature	Detail	Effect
Three stanzas	Each ends with "sunlight"	The repetition of "sunlight" at each stanza's close reinforces the triumph of memory over darkness
Free verse	No regular metre or rhyme	Reflects the freedom of the speaker's inner world — her memory cannot be constrained
Enjambment	Throughout	Ideas and memories flow freely, crossing boundaries — just as the speaker crosses borders
Shift in tone	From reflective to defiant	The poem moves from gentle remembrance to active resistance: "My city hides behind me"
No resolution	The tension between memory and reality is unresolved	The speaker continues to hold both truths simultaneously — her sunlit memory and the dark political reality

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Kamikaze — Beatrice Garland (2013)

Context

Fact	Detail
Poet	Beatrice Garland (b. 1938)
Background	English poet and NHS clinician; interested in Japanese culture
Historical context	Kamikaze pilots were Japanese aviators who flew suicide missions in WWII, crashing their planes into enemy ships
Theme	Honour, shame, the conflict between duty and the instinct for self-preservation
Form	Seven sestets plus two shorter stanzas; third-person narrative with embedded voices

Kamikaze pilots were expected to die for the Emperor — failure to complete the mission was considered the ultimate dishonour. Garland imagines a pilot who turns back from his mission, seduced by the beauty of the natural world below him. When he returns home, his family treat him as though he is dead — he is shunned, ignored, erased. The poem asks whether his act of self-preservation was courage or cowardice, and whether the shame imposed by society is justified or monstrous.

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Content Summary

A daughter tells the story of her father, a kamikaze pilot who turned his plane around. As he flew towards his target, he looked down and saw the sea — fishing boats, the glinting fish, the beauty of the natural world — and was reminded of his childhood and his own father's fishing trips. He returned home. But his family refused to acknowledge his existence: "my mother never spoke again / in his presence." The poem ends with the daughter wondering whether "he must have wondered / which had been the better way to die."

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Key Quotes