Literary Research

Monday 15th March 2021

As well looking at Rich Brian's song 'Yellow' and the 'Sailor' album in general, I also explored some poetry that I believe has to do with migration and identity.

Firstly I looked at 'The Émigrée' by Carol Rumens. It was interesting to read about and shared many ideas, like the idea that a place where people are or have been has an effect on them and also the themes of childhood that is connected to migration.

A places I looked at was https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zqchfrd/revision/1 and https://genius.com/Carol-rumens-emigree-annotated

"A displaced person pictures the country and the city where he or she was born. It is as if Rumens wants her poem to be relevant to as many people who have left their homelands as possible.

Rumens suggests the city and country may now be war-torn, or under the control of a dictatorial government that has banned the language the speaker once knew. Despite this, nothing shakes the light-filled impression of a perfect place that the émigrée’s childhood memories have left. This shows the power that places can have, even over people who have left them long ago and who have never revisited since. Though there is a clear sense of fondness for the place, there is also a more threatening tone in the poem, suggesting perhaps that the relationship with the past and with this place is not necessarily positive for the speaker."

Secondly I looked at 'Checking Out Me History' by John Agard. The poem is really about identity and the education system sort of prevent some people from learning about their history in school; to learn more about their history they have to go checking it out themselves.

For looking at this I looked at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFV_06_UidI and https://genius.com/John-agard-checking-out-me-history-annotated

"John Agard was born in British Guiana, now called Guyana, in the Caribbean, in 1949. He uses non-standard phonetic spelling to represent his accent and mixes Guyanese Creole with standard English. ‘Checking Out Me History’ was published in 2007. It is in the form of a dramatic monologue that employs Creole to represent the voice of a black man who is angered and frustrated by a Eurocentric history syllabus. Agard, speaking for immigrants, black people, mixed race people and other ethnic minorities in the UK, suggests that he is only taught what the British education system deems it appropriate to impart."

The previous two poems are used in GCSE English Literature as part of the 'Power and Conflict' section in the poem anthology.

I also looked into the song 'It's a Sin' by Pet Shop Boys. It is an interesting song that I discovered while watching the 2021 series of the the same name written and developed by Russel T Davies. They both talk about another side to identity.

https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/its-a-sin-by-pet-shop-boys/

"This track is premised on the idea that everything the singer wanted to do or actually had done in his youth somehow drew the ire of the Church. And due to these beliefs being an ingrained part of his being, when he looks back on his life he feels a deep sense of “shame”. Thus in the bridge he is asking God to forgive him. However, these references are sarcastic instead of literal. And in all, what he is basically doing is criticizing the Church based on his inferred belief that they set unrealistic and indeed oppressive moral standards."

Identity is a very vast subject, there are many different types of identity and things that affect our identity.

While thinking about my identity, I decided to write a short poem as a response to the literary research.

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