Poetry, Year 11: Tissue and The Emigrée (Power and Conflict option)

The Koran

HintFamilies sometimes record births and deaths inside their copy.

The whyThe speaker thinks of the pages at the back of a family copy, where births and deaths have been written in by hand. Later examples include maps.

Human skin: the living tissue of the reader's own body

HintThe title word has a second meaning.

The whyThe last line stands alone and speaks to the reader directly. Human life is as thin and as easily marked as paper, and that fragility is presented as something of value.

Nine unrhymed four-line stanzas, then a single line on its own

HintThe last stanza is the odd one out.

The whyOne reading is that the lone final line breaks free of the pattern, as the poem hopes people might break free of the structures paper stands for.

Light

HintHold a page up to a window.

The whyThin pages that it can pass through are set against solid buildings that block it. The poem prefers what is thin, open and temporary to what is heavy and built to last.

2006

HintIn the first decade of this century.

The whyIt comes from Imtiaz Dharker's collection The Terrorist at My Table. She was born in Pakistan and grew up in Glasgow.

No: neither is ever named

HintIt could be any of several places.

The whyLeaving it unnamed lets the poem stand for anyone forced from home. Carol Rumens was not herself an emigrant.

Sunlight

HintThe opposite of the darkness she is told has fallen there.

The whyHowever dark the news of the place becomes, what she remembers stays bright. Ending each stanza on the same image shows how firmly she holds to it.

A child

HintHer picture of it has not grown up.

The whyShe carries a child's vocabulary of the old language and a child's bright picture of the place. The poem admits the memory may not match what the country is now.

Like a gentle companion or pet that comes to her and that she looks after

HintShe cannot go back to it, so it visits her.

The whyShe cannot return because she has no passport. The remembered city is made into something small and loved that she has to protect from a hostile they.

1993

HintIn the early 1990s.

The whyThe poem is written in the first person and has no regular rhyme.