Every card in Poetry, Year 11: Tissue and The Emigrée (Power and Conflict option)
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- Tissue describes several kinds of paper that have power over people's lives. Which holy book is the first example?
The Koran
HintFamilies sometimes record births and deaths inside their copy.
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.
- At the very end of Tissue, what does the paper turn out to stand for?
Human skin: the living tissue of the reader's own body
HintThe title word has a second meaning.
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.
- How is Tissue set out on the page?
Nine unrhymed four-line stanzas, then a single line on its own
HintThe last stanza is the odd one out.
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.
- Tissue keeps returning to one natural thing that passes through thin paper. What is it?
Light
HintHold a page up to a window.
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.
- In which year was Tissue published? (year, four digits)
2006
HintIn the first decade of this century.
WhyIt comes from Imtiaz Dharker's collection The Terrorist at My Table. She was born in Pakistan and grew up in Glasgow.
- Does The Emigrée name the country or the city that the speaker left?
No: neither is ever named
HintIt could be any of several places.
WhyLeaving it unnamed lets the poem stand for anyone forced from home. Carol Rumens was not herself an emigrant.
- Which image of brightness closes every one of the three stanzas of The Emigrée?
Sunlight
HintThe opposite of the darkness she is told has fallen there.
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.
- How old was the speaker of The Emigrée when she left her country?
A child
HintHer picture of it has not grown up.
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.
- In the last stanza of The Emigrée the city is personified. How does it behave towards the speaker?
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.
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.
- In which year was The Emigrée published? (year, four digits)
1993
HintIn the early 1990s.
WhyThe poem is written in the first person and has no regular rhyme.
1★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0066
2★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0067
3★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0068
4★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0069
5★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0070
6★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0071
7★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0072
8★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0073
9★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0074
10★ GCSE-ENLI-POE-0075
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