Introduction: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
“The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens first appeared in 1993 in her collection Thinking of Skins, published by Bloodaxe Books. The poem has remained popular for its exploration of memory, exile, and identity, capturing the emotional conflict of a speaker who has been forced to leave her homeland but continues to view it through an idealized lens. The poem’s recurring motif of “sunlight” — “my memory of it is sunlight-clear” and “I am branded by an impression of sunlight” — symbolizes innocence, nostalgia, and the unshakable beauty of the lost homeland, even when political realities suggest oppression, war, and tyranny (“It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants”). The tension between memory and reality is further dramatized in the imagery of “time rolls its tanks and the frontiers rise between us,” where political violence contrasts with the speaker’s cherished vision of “the white streets of that city, the graceful slopes.” Its popularity lies in this universal resonance: the poem speaks not only to political refugees but to anyone who has experienced displacement, exile, or the bittersweet pull of a remembered home that no longer exists in reality. The closing lines, “my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight,” encapsulate the paradox at the heart of the poem: the speaker’s identity remains indelibly marked by her imagined homeland, a memory that endures despite loss, exile, and hostility.
Text: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
There once was a country… I left it as a child
but my memory of it is sunlight-clear
for it seems I never saw it in that November
which, I am told, comes to the mildest city.
The worst news I receive of it cannot break
my original view, the bright, filled paperweight.
It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,
but I am branded by an impression of sunlight.
The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes
glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks
and the frontiers rise between us, close like waves.
That child’s vocabulary I carried here
like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.
Soon I shall have every coloured molecule of it.
It may by now be a lie, banned by the state
but I can’t get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight.
I have no passport, there’s no way back at all
but my city comes to me in its own white plane.
It lies down in front of me, docile as paper;
I comb its hair and love its shining eyes.
My city takes me dancing through the city
of walls. They accuse me of absence, they circle me.
They accuse me of being dark in their free city.
My city hides behind me. They mutter death,
and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.
Annotations: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
| Stanza | Annotation | Literary Devices |
| Stanza 1 (“There once was a country… branded by an impression of sunlight.”) | The speaker remembers her homeland from childhood. Even though she left young and hears bad news about it, her memory remains pure, beautiful, and full of light. She refuses to let war or tyrants change the positive image in her mind. The metaphor of sunlight symbolizes warmth, purity, and hope. Her past is idealized, like a precious object she cannot break. | • Metaphor (M): “sunlight-clear,” “impression of sunlight.” • Imagery (I): visual description of “bright, filled paperweight.” • Symbolism (S): sunlight = hope, innocence, beauty. • Contrast (C): joy of memory vs. reality of “tyrants” and “war.” • Personification (P): country “sick with tyrants.” |
| Stanza 2 (“The white streets… It tastes of sunlight.”) | The memory of the city becomes even stronger as time passes. Tanks and borders symbolize conflict, but her memory resists them. She recalls carrying a child’s simple language, which now grows richer with time. Even if the state bans the truth, she cannot stop remembering—it remains on her tongue, tasting of sunlight. Memory is powerful and resistant against political oppression. | • Metaphor (M): “time rolls its tanks.” • Simile (Sim): “like a hollow doll” (child’s vocabulary). • Imagery (I): “white streets,” “coloured molecule.” • Symbolism (S): grammar = identity, language, belonging. • Alliteration (A): “tastes of sunlight.” • Juxtaposition (J): truth vs. lie, memory vs. state control. |
| Stanza 3 (“I have no passport… evidence of sunlight.”) | The speaker knows she cannot return; her homeland is lost to her physically. Yet in imagination, her city is alive, loving, and protective. She treats it like a companion, even a person (“combs its hair,” “shining eyes”). However, others accuse her of absence, foreignness, and darkness. The city remains behind her as support, but hostility surrounds her. Her identity as emigrée is both a blessing (sunlight) and a burden (exile, suspicion). | • Personification (P): city “takes me dancing,” “hides behind me.” • Metaphor (M): “my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.” • Juxtaposition (J): love for city vs. hostility of others. • Imagery (I): “docile as paper,” “shining eyes.” • Repetition (R): idea of sunlight tying all stanzas. • Symbolism (S): passport = exile, loss of belonging. |
Literary And Poetic Devices: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
| Device 🎨 | Example from the Poem | Detailed Explanation |
| Alliteration 🔤✨ | “my memory of it is sunlight-clear” | The repetition of the “m” sound in “my memory” and the “s” in “sunlight-clear” creates a musical quality that highlights the clarity and brightness of her remembered homeland. This device strengthens the nostalgic tone by making the imagery more memorable. |
| Ambiguity ❓🌗 | “It may by now be a lie” | The uncertain phrasing reflects how memories can be distorted by time or political censorship. Ambiguity here mirrors the emigrée’s own conflict between what she remembers and what may no longer exist. |
| Anaphora 🔁📜 | “It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants” | The repeated phrase “it may” conveys uncertainty and emphasizes the instability of her homeland. The device mimics the speaker’s struggle to reconcile memory with current political reality. |
| Contrast ⚖️🌌 | “The worst news I receive of it cannot break my original view” | This sharp contrast shows how the harsh reality (news of war and tyranny) cannot shatter her idyllic, unshakable childhood memory of home. |
| Enjambment ➡️✒️ | “The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes / glow even clearer as time rolls its tanks” | By carrying the sentence over the line break, Rumens mirrors the unstoppable flow of time and memory. It also intensifies the imagery of glowing slopes against the intrusion of war. |
| Imagery 🖼️👁️ | “The white streets of that city, the graceful slopes” | Vivid visual images reinforce the purity and idealized perfection of her homeland. The whiteness suggests innocence and clarity, contrasting with darker realities. |
| Juxtaposition 🔲⚡ | “They accuse me of being dark in their free city” | Sets the supposed freedom of the host city against its prejudice. This juxtaposition underscores the irony of exile—though she has fled oppression, she faces discrimination in her new land. |
| Metaphor 🌞🔮 | “I am branded by an impression of sunlight” | Sunlight represents warmth, purity, and eternal hope. Being “branded” suggests permanence, as if her identity is seared by the positive image of her homeland. |
| Mood 🎭🌤️ | Overall nostalgic and tense | The nostalgic mood (loving memories of sunlight and white streets) is complicated by tension (tanks, tyrants, accusations). This shifting mood reflects the emigrée’s inner conflict. |
| Motif ♻️🌞 | Repeated references to “sunlight” | Sunlight recurs in each stanza, unifying the poem. It symbolizes enduring memory and resilience, a motif that connects the personal (her memory) with the universal (hope). |
| Narrative Voice 🗣️📖 | First-person pronouns: “I,” “my” | The consistent use of first-person makes the poem intimate and personal. The emigrée’s individual perspective highlights themes of exile, belonging, and memory. |
| Oxymoron ⚔️🌹 | “Docile as paper” | The simile presents the city as both passive and alive. Paper is fragile, yet it becomes a stand-in for something living (the city). This oxymoronic imagery reflects how memory is both vulnerable and enduring. |
| Personification 👤🏙️ | “My city takes me dancing” | The city is given human qualities—dancing, shining eyes, hiding. This personification makes the city feel like a beloved companion or even a protective guardian, showing the depth of emotional attachment. |
| Repetition 🔂🔊 | “Sunlight… sunlight… sunlight” | The repeated word creates emphasis and rhythm, reinforcing the permanence of her memory. Each mention strengthens the symbolic power of hope and brightness. |
| Sensory Imagery 👅👁️👂 | “It tastes of sunlight” | Moves beyond sight into taste, making the memory physically vivid. This synesthetic blend of senses suggests how deeply embedded and real the memory feels, despite its distance. |
| Simile 🔗🌟 | “Like a hollow doll” | Compares her child’s vocabulary to a doll without substance, symbolizing both fragility and emptiness. This simile reflects how language from childhood carries nostalgia but lacks the depth of lived experience. |
| Symbolism 🕊️🌞 | “Sunlight” and “passport” | Sunlight = hope, purity, and memory. Passport = belonging and legal identity. The absence of a passport emphasizes her exile, while sunlight shows memory’s power to transcend borders. |
| Tone 🎶📜 | Hopeful yet melancholic | The hopeful tone (sunlight, dancing, shining eyes) is countered by melancholy (accusations, muttered death). This duality highlights the tension between memory and exile. |
| Childlike Diction 🧸📚 | “That child’s vocabulary I carried here” | References the language of her childhood, which is simple but meaningful. This diction reflects innocence and ties her identity to her homeland, even though it feels limited. |
| Volta (Shift) 🔄🌊 | “They accuse me of absence, they circle me” | The poem shifts dramatically here: from tender memory to confrontation with hostility. The volta marks a change in tone and theme, highlighting the emigrée’s outsider status. |
Themes: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
🌞 Theme 1: Memory and Nostalgia: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens presents memory as a powerful force that shapes the speaker’s perception of her homeland. Despite leaving her country as a child, she recalls it as a place of beauty and light: “my memory of it is sunlight-clear.” The contrast between what she remembers and what she is told — “for it seems I never saw it in that November / which, I am told, comes to the mildest city” — highlights the tension between subjective memory and objective reality. The imagery of “the bright, filled paperweight” suggests how her memories are preserved and crystallized, untouched by the destructive power of time or political turmoil. This nostalgic vision anchors the poem and reflects the universal human tendency to idealize childhood places, even when they have changed beyond recognition.
⚔️ Theme 2: Conflict and Political Oppression: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens also addresses the harsh political realities of the speaker’s homeland, contrasting them with her luminous memories. She acknowledges the state of her country with stark lines such as: “It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants.” The oppressive imagery of “time rolls its tanks and the frontiers rise between us” evokes authoritarian control, militarization, and exile. Despite these realities, the speaker resists allowing them to tarnish her inner image of her homeland. This theme highlights how personal memory and emotional attachment can resist political narratives, making the poem a reflection on the resilience of identity against external oppression.
🌍 Theme 3: Exile, Identity, and Belonging: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens deeply explores exile and its impact on identity. The speaker acknowledges displacement: “I have no passport, there’s no way back at all” — a statement of exile’s permanence. Yet, her homeland remains embedded in her speech and self: “That child’s vocabulary I carried here / like a hollow doll, opens and spills a grammar.” Language becomes both a burden and a gift, symbolizing how identity persists through memory and words. Despite being accused of absence and treated as an outsider — “They accuse me of being dark in their free city” — the speaker affirms her bond with the lost homeland. This struggle between belonging and exclusion captures the migrant’s dilemma, making the poem resonate with contemporary discussions on displacement and cultural identity.
☀️ Theme 4: Sunlight as Symbol of Hope and Idealization: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens uses the recurring symbol of sunlight to represent hope, purity, and the untarnished beauty of the speaker’s homeland. From the opening — “my memory of it is sunlight-clear” — to the closing affirmation — “my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight” — the motif binds the poem together. Sunlight symbolizes not only memory but also resilience, the speaker’s determination to hold onto love and beauty in the face of war, exile, and hostility. Even when she admits her vision may be false — “It may by now be a lie, banned by the state” — she cannot relinquish it because it “tastes of sunlight.” Thus, sunlight transcends reality, functioning as a metaphor for hope, imagination, and the enduring human need to idealize and preserve the past.
Literary Theories and “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
| Literary Theory | Reference from the Poem | Explanation |
| Postcolonial Theory 🌍⛓️ | “It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants” | Postcolonial theory examines themes of displacement, exile, and cultural power struggles. The emigrée reflects how political oppression and authoritarian regimes force individuals into exile. The imagery of “tyrants” and “war” mirrors colonial/postcolonial struggles over power, borders, and identity. |
| Psychoanalytic Theory 🧠💭 | “I am branded by an impression of sunlight” | From a Freudian/Lacanian lens, the poem explores memory, repression, and the unconscious. The “sunlight” acts as a psychological imprint — a symbol of an idealized homeland. Despite external realities, the emigrée’s unconscious clings to childhood memories as a defense against trauma. |
| Feminist Theory 👩🦰✊ | “My city takes me dancing through the city of walls” | Feminist theory highlights voice, identity, and agency. The city is personified almost as a partner or protector, suggesting a nurturing, feminine-coded relationship. At the same time, the emigrée faces exclusion (“They accuse me of being dark”), which reflects how women and exiles face layered marginalization. |
| New Historicism 📜🏛️ | “Time rolls its tanks and the frontiers rise between us” | New Historicism situates literature in historical/political context. Tanks and frontiers evoke real-world conflicts, nationalism, and border controls. The emigrée’s memory resists these historical forces, but the poem cannot be separated from the political realities of migration, exile, and modern geopolitics. |
Critical Questions about “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
❓1. How does memory shape the speaker’s perception of the homeland?
“The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens foregrounds the role of memory in shaping how the speaker envisions her country. Even though she left it as a child, her recollections remain “sunlight-clear,” suggesting purity and innocence untouched by political realities. The metaphor of “the bright, filled paperweight” conveys how memory preserves a frozen, idealized vision. Despite hearing “the worst news” about her homeland, her imagination resists corruption, creating a powerful contrast between her subjective recollection and the objective suffering of the present. This raises the critical question of whether memory reflects reality or constructs a comforting illusion — one that shields her from the pain of exile while simultaneously distancing her from the truth.
❓2. What is the significance of exile and displacement in the poem?
“The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens uses exile as both a physical and psychological condition. The speaker asserts, “I have no passport, there’s no way back at all,” acknowledging the permanent rupture between herself and her homeland. Yet, she continues to embody it through memory, language, and affection. The metaphor of “That child’s vocabulary I carried here / like a hollow doll” symbolizes how exile fragments identity, leaving her with remnants of her cultural past that spill into her present. At the same time, the speaker is othered in her new country: “They accuse me of being dark in their free city.” Thus, displacement not only severs her from her homeland but also alienates her from her place of residence, leaving her caught between two worlds — never fully belonging to either.
❓3. How does the recurring motif of sunlight function in the poem?
“The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens employs sunlight as a recurring motif that embodies hope, beauty, and resilience. From the beginning, the homeland is remembered as “sunlight-clear” and its taste lingers on her tongue: “It tastes of sunlight.” Sunlight becomes an emblem of the homeland’s idealized image, persisting despite political oppression and the passage of time. Even her shadow — a symbol of exile and dislocation — testifies to its presence: “my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight.” Critically, the sunlight may represent an imagined or even false vision, but its power lies in how it sustains the speaker’s identity. This raises questions about whether the idealization of the past is an act of resistance or self-deception, reflecting the tension between nostalgia and reality.
❓4. How does the poem explore the relationship between personal identity and political oppression?
“The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens juxtaposes the intimate voice of memory with the harsh realities of tyranny and war. The speaker admits her country “may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants,” acknowledging political violence, yet refuses to let this define her sense of belonging. Instead, she claims her homeland through language and imagination, combing its hair and loving “its shining eyes.” However, the political oppression extends into her present, as she is accused of absence and treated as an outsider: “They accuse me of being dark in their free city.” This intertwining of personal identity with larger political forces reveals how exile creates a fractured self, where private memory resists but cannot entirely escape the pressures of external authority. The poem thus critiques how politics invades even the most intimate experiences of identity.
Literary Works Similar to “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
- “Refugee Blues” by W. H. Auden 🌍🎶
Like The Emigrée, it captures the pain of exile and displacement, voicing the struggles of refugees facing rejection and hostility. - “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes 🌊🖤
Both poems use strong imagery of memory and heritage, with Hughes linking rivers to identity as Rumens links sunlight to homeland. - “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen ⚔️💀
While Owen depicts the horrors of war directly, both poems contrast violent political realities with the personal human cost of conflict. - “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas 🌌🔥
Both use recurring imagery (sunlight in Rumens, light/dark in Thomas) to symbolize resilience and the human spirit against loss. - “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley 🏛️⏳
Similar in its meditation on power, memory, and loss — Rumens on exile, Shelley on ruined empires — both emphasize how memory resists time and tyranny. - “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost 🌲🛤️
Both explore choices and their consequences: Frost through literal roads, Rumens through the figurative “road” of exile and memory. - “Island Man” by Grace Nichols 🌴🌅
Directly parallels The Emigrée in its depiction of an immigrant clinging to memories of homeland, contrasting remembered beauty with present reality.
Representative Quotations of “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
| Quotation 🎨 | Context | Theoretical Explanation |
| “There once was a country… I left it as a child” 🌍👧 | Opening line; the speaker recalls her homeland, immediately situating the poem in memory and exile. | Postcolonial theory: The displacement of identity begins here, foregrounding migration and the loss of rootedness. |
| “My memory of it is sunlight-clear” ☀️🧠 | Memory described as pure, bright, untarnished by reality. | Psychoanalytic lens: Memory as an unconscious idealization, protecting her from trauma of loss. |
| “The worst news I receive of it cannot break my original view” 📜⚖️ | She insists her memory resists the negative reports of war and tyranny. | Reader-response / resistance reading: Shows how personal memory overpowers political narratives. |
| “It may be at war, it may be sick with tyrants” ⚔️⛓️ | Acknowledges the homeland’s suffering under oppression. | New Historicism: Links the poem to real political contexts of exile and authoritarian regimes. |
| “I am branded by an impression of sunlight” 🔥☀️ | Suggests an inescapable, permanent mark of memory. | Psychoanalytic: The metaphor of branding suggests trauma but also attachment — memory is burned into identity. |
| “That child’s vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll” 🧸📚 | She recalls the innocence of her childhood language and how it feels fragile in exile. | Feminist/Postcolonial: Language as identity; exile fragments linguistic heritage and reduces it to nostalgia. |
| “It tastes of sunlight” 👅☀️ | Sensory image of memory becoming physical and real. | Phenomenology: Embodied memory; sunlight is not just remembered but experienced through the senses. |
| “I have no passport, there’s no way back at all” 🛂🚫 | She recognizes the impossibility of physically returning to her homeland. | Postcolonial theory: Exile strips away national identity, making belonging a contested concept. |
| “My city takes me dancing through the city of walls” 💃🏙️ | The city is personified as a companion, both tender and entrapped. | Feminist theory: The homeland is feminized, nurturing yet constrained by patriarchal/political walls. |
| “They accuse me of being dark in their free city” 🌑⚖️ | Outsiders in the host land view her with suspicion and prejudice. | Postcolonial / Critical Race Theory: Exposes xenophobia; even “free” societies impose otherness on migrants. |
Suggested Readings: “The Emigrée” by Carol Rumens
- Rumens, Carol, and Isabelle Cartwright. “Carol Rumens: Interviewed by Isabelle Cartwright.” The Poetry Ireland Review, no. 36, 1992, pp. 8–14. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25577392. Accessed 6 Sept. 2025.
- Ford, Mark, editor. “Carol Rumens (1944–).” London: A History in Verse, Harvard University Press, 2012, pp. 664–65. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv22jnsm7.176. Accessed 6 Sept. 2025.