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Carol Rumens · Power and Conflict Anthology
AQA10 questions available at this level
by Carol Rumens
Carol Rumens (born 1944) is a British poet, novelist, and critic. Although not an émigrée herself, Rumens has a deep interest in Eastern European politics and culture, particularly the experiences of those displaced by political conflict.
The unnamed city: The city is intentionally unnamed, allowing the poem to speak to any displaced person. Rumens has confirmed the absence of specifics is deliberate. Avoid identifying it as Sarajevo, Beirut, or any specific place - the universality is the point.
Emigration and exile: The poem explores the experience of being forced to leave one's homeland -- a reality for millions displaced by war, political oppression, and regime change. The speaker's country is deliberately left unnamed, making the poem universal rather than tied to one specific conflict.
Cold War context: Written in 1993, the poem resonates with Cold War-era displacement, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Many people were separated from homelands that were physically transformed or politically erased.
Nostalgia vs. reality: A central tension in the poem is between the speaker's idealised, sunlit memory of their homeland and the brutal present reality of war, tyranny, and destruction. Memory becomes a form of resistance against political erasure.
Political oppression: References to tyrants, tanks, rising frontiers, a childhood language that the state may have banned, and a hostile walled city evoke authoritarian regimes that invade cities, censor language, and prevent exiles from returning. The poem suggests that while physical places can be taken, memories cannot be controlled by those in power.
Identity and belonging: The speaker exists between two worlds -- exiled from a homeland she remembers with love, with "no passport" and no way back, and treated with suspicion in the city where she now lives, whose people accuse her and circle her. Memory, and the language she still carries, become her source of selfhood.
“There once was”
The fairy-tale formula opens the poem and introduces the homeland, creating nostalgia and distance, as if it exists only in story. The ellipsis later in line 1 is a gap in memory, or a reluctance to confront the past. She left as a child, which explains why the memory is so pure and uncomplicated.
“sunlight-clear”
A compound adjective (line 2) fuses the poem's central motif of light with absolute clarity. The memory is presented as bright and uncorrupted, contrasting with the murky political reality of the present.
“sick with tyrants”
Personifying the country as sick (line 7) suggests tyranny is a disease infecting the nation. The repeated modal verb in the line shows the speaker is cut off from current information, relying on speculation rather than knowledge. Even so, line 8 turns straight back to sunlight.
“branded by an impression of sunlight”
The idea of being "branded" carries connotations of both ownership (as in cattle branding) and permanent marking (as in a burn). The memory is not gentle -- it is seared into the speaker, suggesting both pain and permanence. This line closes the first stanza and begins the sunlight refrain that ends every stanza.
“time rolls its tanks”
Time is personified as an invading army (line 10). The image of tanks brings war into the remembered city, yet its streets shine brighter as it happens: the harder reality presses, the brighter memory shines.
“frontiers rise between us”
Personifying borders as actively rising (line 11) presents political boundaries as aggressive, living barriers. The "between us" phrasing implies a personal, almost romantic separation between the speaker and her city, and the line ends by comparing the borders to closing waves.
“hollow doll”
The childhood language she carried into exile is compared to a doll (line 13), perhaps a nesting doll, that opens to pour out its grammar. Language holds her identity inside it, layer within layer, and keeps giving up more of the lost country. The next lines admit the state may have banned it, but it stays on her tongue.
“no passport”
The final stanza opens with the political fact stated bluntly (line 17): she cannot return. But the next line reverses it, as the city travels to her instead. Where politics has closed the border, memory and imagination open it.
“takes me dancing”
Personifying the city as a dance partner creates an image of joyful intimacy (line 21). The city actively welcomes and embraces the speaker, and just before it she brushes its hair like a parent with a child. But the dance goes through a walled city in which she is accused and circled: her joy is an act of defiance.
“evidence of sunlight”
The final line answers the accusers. They call her dark (line 23), and her shadow seems to be the proof they want, but a shadow can only be cast by light: the darkness they point to is itself evidence of the sun. The refrain ends as defiance, not passive memory.
“takes me dancing”
The city is given human qualities, acting as a lover or companion who actively embraces the speaker. Just before, it lays itself before her and she brushes its hair, as if it were a child. This creates a sense of mutual belonging and intimacy that transcends physical distance, suggesting the homeland is alive within the speaker's imagination.
“sunlight-clear”
Sunlight represents the warmth, clarity, and permanence of the speaker's childhood memories. It contrasts with the war, tyranny, and tanks of the present-day homeland, and with the darkness she is accused of in line 23. Light becomes a symbol of hope and resistance against political erasure.
“sunlight”
The word "sunlight" ends every stanza (lines 8, 16 and 25), creating a structural anchor and a sense of inevitability -- no matter what darkness is described, the poem always returns to light. The refrain also mirrors the cyclical nature of memory, which keeps returning to the same bright images.
“branded”
"Branded" compares memory to a physical mark burned into the skin. This suggests the memory is both painful and permanent -- it cannot be removed or forgotten. The violence of the word "branded" contrasts with the gentle warmth of "sunlight", capturing the bittersweet nature of nostalgic exile.
“time rolls its tanks”
Time is personified as an invading army, and the image of war is set directly against the pale streets and hillsides of the remembered city, which shine all the brighter. The juxtaposition of beauty and violence is a key structural technique: the speaker's idealised memory is placed directly against the brutal present reality, and the reader feels the emotional whiplash of exile.
“hollow doll”
Her childhood language is compared to a doll that opens to pour out its grammar, perhaps a nesting doll with more inside each layer. Identity is stored in language, and language keeps giving back the lost country, even if the state has banned it.
“tyrants ... tanks ... frontiers”
The vocabulary of political oppression runs through the poem: tyrants, tanks and frontiers, then a language the state may have forbidden (line 15), the missing passport (line 17) and accusers who circle her and threaten death (lines 22 to 24). It grounds the personal experience of memory in a wider context of conflict and displacement, reminding the reader that the speaker's nostalgia is not mere sentimentality but a response to genuine political violence.
“evidence of sunlight”
The accusation of being dark (line 23) is turned around: her shadow, the darkness they point to, can only exist because of light. The speaker reclaims the language used against her, and the poem ends in defiance rather than loss.
William Blake
John Agard
Beatrice Garland
“The Émigrée” by Carol Rumens (from Thinking of Skins: New & Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books, 1993) remains in copyright. To respect the rights holder, this study guide paraphrases and describes the poem rather than reproducing it verbatim. Quotations are short fair-dealing extracts under CDPA 1988 §30 (criticism, review, quotation), checked against the text Poetry By Heart publishes by kind permission of Bloodaxe Books. The paraphrases are the site’s own words, not the poet’s. Read the full poem in the AQA Power & Conflict anthology or the named Bloodaxe edition.