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The Emigrée by Carol Rumens: GCSE poem guide
A woman who left her city as a child cannot go back, yet her memory of it stays bright. What happens in each stanza, how Rumens does it, and which poems to compare it with.
‘The Emigrée’ is by Carol Rumens, and it was published in 1993. AQA’s anthology prints the title as ‘The Émigrée’, with an accent on the first letter. It is one of the fifteen poems in the Power and Conflict cluster, and it is still in copyright, so we quote only short phrases here. Read the whole poem in your anthology.
An émigrée is a woman who has left her own country, often to escape war or political danger. The speaker left her city as a child and cannot return. She hears that it may now be at war or ruled by cruel leaders, but in her memory it is still full of sunlight, and she will not let that memory go.
Read the transcript
This is ‘The Emigrée’ by Carol Rumens, from the Power and Conflict cluster of the AQA anthology. I’m Hannah, and I teach English. The question we’ll answer: How does every part of ‘The Emigrée’ keep the speaker’s lost city bright? We’ll go through the context, the poem section by section, one quotation explored closely and a model paragraph. First, the context.
What an émigrée is. An émigrée is a woman who has left her own country, often to escape war or political danger. Exile means being forced to live away from your own country. Rumens’s poem. Carol Rumens published ‘The Emigrée’ in 1993.
Her speaker left her city as a child and cannot go back. A city in danger. The speaker admits that her city may now be at war or ruled by tyrants, yet she keeps it bright in her memory. Memory as resistance. The city she carries in her memory cannot be taken by any state.
Remembering it becomes a way of resisting. ‘The Emigrée’ is still in copyright, so I won’t read it here. Open your anthology at the poem and read it twice: once for what happens, once for who is speaking and what changes. Lines 1 to 8: The bright memory. “sunlight-clear”.
A compound adjective that joins light to clarity. After the fairy-tale opening of line 1, the memory sounds bright and sharp, the way a child would see it. “I am told”. She only hears second-hand about the city’s dark side. Her own memory refuses it, and the reader begins to wonder whether her bright city still exists.
“sick with tyrants”. Personification: the country is ill. The next line returns to light, as she is branded by it, so the threat never wins the stanza. Each stanza ends on sunlight. “sick with tyrants”.
An émigrée often leaves to escape war or political danger. Rumens never names the country, so these cruel rulers could belong to many places people have fled. Lines 9 to 16: Tanks, borders and language. “time rolls its tanks”. Metaphor: time becomes an invading army.
The verb “rolls” makes it slow and unstoppable, yet the white streets of line 9 glow clearer as it advances. “like a hollow doll”. A simile for the child’s language she brought with her. Like a nesting doll, it opens and spills out more and more of the place she lost. “banned by the state”.
A government that silences its people. Her language or her memory may now be forbidden at home, the kind of political danger that makes people leave their country. “banned by the state”. She admits the memory may now be a lie, then refuses to give it up because it tastes of sunlight. Her loyalty is stubborn and physical.
Lines 17 to 20: The city comes to her. “I have no passport”. Without papers she cannot cross the border. The short, flat statement makes exile final: being forced to live away from her country is now her whole life. “I comb its hair”.
Personification: the city flies to her in its own plane and lies down calmly like a child. The verb “comb” is tender and protective. “I comb its hair”. The roles reverse. She left the city as a child, and now she mothers it.
The reader sees a love that has grown stronger with distance. And lines 21 to 25. “dark in their free city”. Where she lives now, people distrust her as an outsider. The irony of “free” suggests that a free country can still treat someone who has fled with suspicion.
“dark in their free city”. Light against dark: to the people around her she is “dark”, while she carries sunlight inside her. Their walls and repeated accusations close in on her. “evidence of sunlight”. The last line ends on sunlight, as every stanza does.
A shadow needs light to cast it, so even her darkness proves the city still shines. “evidence of sunlight”. A defiant ending. They accuse and threaten her, yet she has the last word, and the city hiding behind her in line 24 stays safe. So, to sum it up in one sentence: Rumens uses light imagery and personification to show that a person forced to leave her country can keep her city alive in memory, where no tanks, borders or suspicious neighbours can reach it.
One quotation, explored closely: “time rolls its tanks”. Try it yourself first: method, zoom in, effect, and the context or purpose. Method: A metaphor in the second stanza that personifies time as an invading army. Zoom in: “tanks” brings war into the poem. The verb “rolls” makes the advance slow, heavy and impossible to stop.
Effect: The longer she is away, the more the city is threatened by war and by time. The reader feels her memory under attack. Context: An émigrée is a woman who has left her own country, often to escape war or political danger. Rumens shows exile as a war fought with time as well as tanks. And here’s a model What–How–Why paragraph for the question: How does Rumens present the speaker’s love for her city?
Rumens presents the speaker’s love for her city as a bond that war and distance cannot break. Her memory is “sunlight-clear”, and light returns all through the poem. Even when she admits the city may be “sick with tyrants”, the light stays. In the second stanza the city is personified: “I comb its hair”. The gentle verb makes the city like a child she cares for, so the speaker becomes its protector.
By the end “My city hides behind me”, as if she is shielding it from the people who accuse her. An émigrée is a woman who has left her country, often to escape war or political danger. Rumens shows that memory gives the speaker a power that no state can take away: the city lives on inside her. Everything in this video comes from our Power and Conflict poetry scheme of learning for schools. If you’re a teacher, Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education.
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What happens
The poem has three stanzas.
Stanza 1. The poem opens like a fairy tale. The speaker remembers a country she left as a child, and her memory of it is bright and clear. She admits that the news she hears is bad: the city may be at war, or under the rule of tyrants. None of that changes the picture in her head. She is marked for ever by the sunlight she remembers.
Stanza 2. The threat grows. Time passes like an invading army, and borders rise between her and the city. The language she spoke as a child is still with her, and it keeps opening up more of the place she lost. That language may now be banned by the state. Even if her memory is a lie, she says, it tastes of sunlight.
Stanza 3. She has no passport, and there is no way back. So the city comes to her instead, in her mind. It is personified as a companion, almost like a child she looks after: she combs its hair. It takes her dancing. Where she lives now, the people around her are suspicious. They accuse her and circle her. Still, her city hides behind her, safe, and even her shadow proves that the sunlight is real.
The main ideas
Memory as power. The speaker has no passport, no home and no power over the state. What she has is her memory, and no government can take it from her.
Exile and loss. She was forced to leave as a child and can never go back. The city she remembers may no longer exist.
Identity. Her language, her memories and her city make her who she is, even in a place that treats her as an outsider.
Light against dark. Sunlight and brightness run all through the poem. War, tyrants and suspicion bring darkness, and the light always wins the last word.
Language, form and structure
Fairy-tale opening. The poem begins “There once was a country”. The words there once was belong to children’s stories, so the city sounds magical and far away, as if it might never have been quite real.
Personification. Her country may be “sick with tyrants”. The word sick makes the country a person who is ill. The cruel rulers are like a disease, and the country is the victim, not the enemy.
Metaphor. In stanza 2, “time rolls its tanks”. The word tanks brings war into the poem, and the verb rolls makes the advance slow, heavy and impossible to stop. The longer she is away, the more the city is threatened by war and by time.
Personification. In stanza 3 the speaker says “I comb its hair”. The verb comb is tender and caring. She left the city as a child, and now she looks after it as if it were her child. Her love has grown stronger with distance.
Light imagery. The last line ends on “evidence of sunlight”. The word evidence makes it sound like proof in a court case. A shadow needs light to make it, so even her darkness proves the city still shines.
Form and structure. The poem has three stanzas in the first person, of eight, eight and nine lines, with no regular rhyme. Each stanza ends on the word sunlight. The danger grows from stanza to stanza: war and tyrants, then tanks and borders, then a city where people accuse her. The light holds out every time.
Context
Carol Rumens was born in London in 1944.
Rumens never names the city or the country in the poem. That is deliberate: it could be one of many places that people have had to leave because of war or cruel governments. Do not try to work out which country it is. Write about what the poem shows about exile, memory and power.
Poems to compare it with
Kamikaze. Both poems show people cut off from the home they knew. The pilot in ‘Kamikaze’ is shut out by his own family; the émigrée is shut out by a border. Both poems use bright memories of a place to show what has been lost.
Tissue. Both poems question borders. In ‘The Emigrée’ borders rise between the speaker and her city; in ‘Tissue’ the sun shines through borders on a map as if they barely exist.
Checking Out Me History. Both speakers hold on to an identity that people in power try to take from them, and both end defiant.
For how to plan the comparison, read How to compare two poems.
Lines to learn
- “There once was a country” (the speaker, stanza 1). The fairy-tale opening that makes her memory sound magical.
- “sick with tyrants” (the speaker, stanza 1). Her country is ill, and the cruel rulers are the disease.
- “time rolls its tanks” (the speaker, stanza 2). Time becomes an invading army.
- “I comb its hair” (the speaker, stanza 3). She looks after the city as if it were her child.
- “evidence of sunlight” (the speaker, stanza 3). The defiant last words: even her shadow proves the city still shines.
Test yourself
5 quotations from this page. For each one, choose who says it and where it comes from. Ten at a time, in a new order every round.
Where is it? Open each quotation to check your answer.
“There once was a country”
The speaker, stanza 1
“sick with tyrants”
The speaker, stanza 1
“time rolls its tanks”
The speaker, stanza 2
“I comb its hair”
The speaker, stanza 3
“evidence of sunlight”
The speaker, stanza 3
Frequently asked questions
What is The Emigrée by Carol Rumens about?
A woman who left her city as a child remembers it as bright and full of sunlight. She hears it may now be at war or ruled by tyrants, and she can never go back. Even so, her memory of the city stays strong, and it gives her comfort and courage.
What does émigrée mean?
An émigrée is a woman who has left her own country, usually to escape war or political danger. The word comes from French.
Which country is The Emigrée about?
Rumens never names it. The city could be any of the many places people have had to leave, so write about exile and memory, without guessing a real country.
Why does every stanza of The Emigrée end with sunlight?
Sunlight is her memory of the city. Each stanza brings a bigger threat, and each one still ends on light, which shows that her memory keeps winning against war, tyrants and suspicion.
What poem goes well with The Emigrée?
‘Kamikaze’ is a strong partner for people cut off from home. ‘Tissue’ works for borders, and ‘Checking Out Me History’ for identity and power.
Sources
- AQA, GCSE English Literature 8702 specification (Paper 2, Section B)
- Wikipedia, Carol Rumens (born in London in 1944; Thinking of Skins: New and Selected Poems, Bloodaxe, 1993)