hey guys welcome to give your graad a glow up today we're going to be looking at a poem from the power and conflict cluster we're going to be looking at the igra by Carol Romans this poem is told from a woman's perspective and she's talking about when she was a child and she was forced to run away from her Homeland and move immigrate to another country because of so she's describing her memories of her home country and she explains that even though she can never go back there now it still has a really important place in her heart and she refuses to think of it in a bad way she refuses to focus on the w and the negative things that are happening there or the negative things people are saying about her country because she loves it it's a part of her and she talks about the country that she has moved to her new home and the people aren't as welcoming it's nothing like the positivity of her old country 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 paper w 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 shall have every colored 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 I never used to love this poem when I first read it but over time as I really got to understand it I feel like it's really grown on me I really like it now I think it creates some really beautiful images so what we need to do is we need to go through line by line make sure we understand exactly what's going on in the poem and then I'm going to select at least three juicy quotations and what I mean by Juicy is quotations that have interesting language devices words that you can zoom into and we can just give loads of interpretations so if this poem comes up in your exams you have lots of things to say about it let's start from the beginning the title of the poem itself is indicative of the content of the poem so the is written in English and then we've got igra which is written in French so it's the idea immediately of two conflicting cultures and identities and the poem starts like a children's fairy tale in the style of like once upon a time it say there was once a country I left it as a child and this could be a motif for childhood which is ironic because the story that follows describes harsh adult experiences but it also creates this romanticized tone the past tense shows the narrator has not moved on from her childhood she's glorifying the memories in her head it was like probably even better than it was in real life and then we have the ellipses which creates a pause as if she's reflecting on these font memories taking a moment to really soak it in perhaps as an alternative interpretation that ellipses could also be the unreliability of her memory like she's struggling to remember the details because it was quite a while ago now notice this is really important she doesn't provide any information on which country she has left or where she has fled to she just says a country or says it and this was intentionally done by the poet so that the poem would apply universally to everyone and it tells the story of the struggles of all refugees the fact that she mentions she was a child as a refugee makes her seem even more vulnerable and helpless she was not only a refugee she was also a child so she was completely powerless and had no control of her fate she then says but my memory of it is sunlight clear for it seems I never saw it in that November which I am told com to the mildest city now let me explain what that means and let's Analyze This quotation so copy it down for me there's a metaphor of sunlight and that has connotations of happiness and positivity and warmth so the poet is using pathetic fallacy to show the speaker's memories of her country bringing her Comfort ALS also the sun is really powerful I just want to point out so I'm not just going to say one thing about the sun in my exam my marks lie in my analysis the more interesting things I can say the higher my Mark will be so I'm going to try and say one thing about the Sun and then bring in another interpretation so the sun is also a really powerful force and that shows that nothing can shake her light filled impression of this perfect utopian place that she left she she feels that love with such a passion such a force and it shows the power that places can have if we think about power and conflict it shows the power places can have even over people who have left them long ago and have never Revisited since now November the reference of November is late Autumn so when she's saying I never saw it in aember she's saying she's blocked out that darkness and that gloominess that's associated with November with Autumn and that's a metaphor for all of those unhappy political events that were going on in her country she's saying I never saw them and then she says I am told suggesting that she was too young to know much about her home country other than what people told her and I am told also creates this separation between her beliefs and what people are telling her she's saiding well I'm told that there was November there I'm told there were some bad things happening there but it kind of implies she disagrees with other people's opinions when she says November can come even to the mildest City she's basically suggesting that disaster can strike any place any country even when they don't deserve it it goes on to say the worst news I receive of it cannot break my original view the bright filled paperweight so she knows the images in her mind the distorted memories are unrealistic but she's not going to allow those memories of her birthplace to be tainted even if they're not real a paper weight is like a heavy object that keeps paper in place so they don't fly away and so that metaphor conveys the solid unchangeable ideas in the speaker's mind she wants to ensure that any flimsy little doubts that she has are kept in place she wants to hold on to her positive memories she wants to keep grasp like a paper weight and keep the beliefs that are so essential to who she is she says it may be at War it may be sick with Tyrant but I am branded by an impression of sunlight my favorite quote let's analyze it let's write it down she says there's repetition in it may and that's kind of dismissive of the serious criticisms that her country faces from Western communities she's saying regardless of what's happening it may be this it may be that whatever is happening politically in her home country she will retain her original view there's a modal verb May and that implies a sense of Doubt like she's not saying it is sick re Tyrant she's saying it may be so she's still not accepting the possibility that her country may be flawed she's like it maybe I mean it could be the country is personified as being sick a country can't be sick it's almost like if you say someone is sick is almost being sympathetic she's saying my country needs healing rather than criticizing it and there's that conjunction but which has a red defensive tone like it may be happening but I don't care so it has this defensive tone her refusal to accept any negativity she would rather stick SCT to her illusory Viewpoint than accept the reality making her seem arguably quite delusional she wants to portray her country in a really positive way and the repetition of the word sunlight we see sunlight again suggests that the speaker has an almost dreamlike picture of the past and it says the country has branded her which is a metaphor she hasn't actually been branded if hasn't literally left any marks on her but it's left a great impact on her it's an integral part of her and if something's been branded nothing can remove the positive memories she has it can't be erased moreover she could also be indicating that she has been branded by society as an outsider she's saying I'm branded by my count as soon as people see me they can see where I'm from they can see the country I'm from I look different and I don't belong anywhere else I think that was three interpretations I like that let's move on the white streets of that City the graceful slopes glow even clearer As Time rolls its tanks color imagery we should definitely analyze it if you want some quick easy marks in your exam if you spot a color talk about it now white has connotations of innocence and purity and could depict the beauty of her country before the war destroyed it also it reflects her naivity how naive she was clinging to an idealized view of her country and why is also the color of surrender you know when you hold up a white flag and that could imply that she has surrendered to her fantasies or her city has surrendered to an invading Force the personification of time rolling its tank makes time seem like the enemy you know tanks in war it's like time is the person she's fighting and that could be because her country has changed over time or she's worried that over time she's going to forget her Heritage so time is kind of the enemy here there is Dental plosive alliteration in time tanks that t t and creates this violent tone reinforcing the way her city has been destroyed over time within that sentence there is J the position which show how different her memories are to reality on one hand she's like white graceful slopes and then she's like tanks so it kind of really shows that contrast I'm going to say something else about this quotation the negative reports that the speaker hears of her country makes her cherish her positive memories even more dearly a frontier is a border separating two countries so it symbolizes the one the speaker left and the one to which she ran away with her family and it's also possible the frontier is another metaphor and it describes the two mentalities within the one speaker the kind of idealistic girl with glowing childhood memories and then the adult whose intelligence tells her that perhaps she's romanticizing what she barely remembers and the simil clows like waves it creates the impression of a metaphorical sea flowing in between the two countries like the waves are closing in which means they're separated permanently also maybe it's like the people were leaving the city really fast like waves and then it could be referring to the waves that refugees have to travel on it could be a reference also now that I think about it it could also be a reference to The Parting of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus so once the Israelites were through the waves flowed back and then the path was closed again so in the same way the emigrate the speaker can never return because there are waves now the waves have closed she can never go back then she says the child's vocabulary I carried here like a hollow doll opens and Spills a grammar soon I shall have every colored molecule of it so she was a child so the vocabulary she had Learned was very limited but her language those words are still inside her and they are waiting to just pour out and she calls them colored those like that her language is like colored molecules so she's celebrating her language and her Heritage she's proud of being bilingual and the simile of the doll could also imply that the oppressive regime she fled dehumanized the population so she lost her essential identity and what was left of her was just like a doll like a puppet and then she says it may by now be a lie banned by the state but I can't get it off my tongue it tastes of sunlight so the language that she used to speak has now been banned but she refers back to that sunlight metaphor that she introduced in the first stanza the language is so important and real to the speaker that she can't not speak it taste like sunlight is interesting because it combines sight and taste sunlight is something you see and then she says it tastes like sunlight so she's combining the senses and that is something called synesthesia so she's basically mixing the senses to say she can't get it off her tongue I think the cesur is really interesting in here the full stop to me it symbolizes that the speaker has been silenced by the way the state has banned her language she says I have no passport there's no way back at all so she's unable to go back to her home City because her lack of passport obliterates her identity she's run away from one place only to be trapped in another and that kind of exemplifies the pain and conflict inflicted by man-made borders we say oh this is a border this is country one this is country two you need a passport to get from here to he and we restrict human beings and this is the kind of thing that those restrictions cause this is the kind of pain those restrictions cause and it's even more tragic that someone who loves their country so much is denied entry there and she says but my city comes to me in its own white plane she still has vision of what used to be she says her city lies down in front of her doile as paper doile means ready to accept instructions submissive so that simile suggests that her visions of her City are controlled by her she can instruct them to be exactly the way she wants them to be and it's interesting she says paper because paper can be folded and be refolded and it's kind of like she can Create and Craft and mold her memories she can remember what she wishes the good memories and she can block out all the negative she says I comb its hair and love its shining eyes the city is being personified as like a doll or a pet with its eyes shining so she's loving it like a mother she's looking after it she's nurturing it and there's I Amit pentameter structurally used here I Amic pentam means when a line has 10 syllables in it and it's meant to to be read in this rhythm of like dunununun so five lots of two it sounds like a heartbeat and perhaps that reinforces her affection and her passion for her country she says my city takes me dancing through the city of walls so again her city is personified and it kind of makes it feel magical it's going through walls and brings her Joy like when you're dancing she goes on to talk about the new place she's moved to and it's not like that she says they accuse me of absence they Circle me they accuse me of being dark in their free City I think we should Analyze This quotation I think you should write it down the pronoun they is used here and that is basically undefined and deliberately ambiguous who is they so it could represent the government it could represent the population the people people living there but they whoever it is is plural there are lots of them and that makes her seem like a victim they versus me it makes her seem like an outsider outnumbered doesn't feel like she's a part of them and the repetition of they accuse me they accuse me it's really menacing it's really threatening and that rule of three shows the level of persecution she faces is she's being targeted and she's saying the verb Circle they're circling her it makes them seem like Predators waiting to attack and the use of dark when she says they call me dark contrasts with the white used earlier and that's a reference to racism literally being darker in skin color but then also the kind of connotations of Evil dark there's aora here which creates a break in the line a pause and that shows how she's been broken as a result of her displacement I like the next bit she says my city hides behind me they mutter death and My Shadow Falls as evidence of sunlight so despite the threat of death she still feels strong because her city is behind her like it's backing her up it's got her back or she's saying my city is behind me like she's protecting her City she's getting in front of it and saying got to go Through Me First and the speaker ends the poem on a positive note with that last final reference to sunlight she says even when there's a shadow I will always see sunlight she will always feel optimism she will always be patriotic now structurally if we look at the structure of the poem there is no rhyme it's written in free verse and perhaps that's representative of the freedom that she craves or you could arguably say that that kind of no fix structure conveys the chaos in her hometown and there you have it we have got analysis of language devices we've got interesting quotations and we've got analysis of structure however in your exam that is not enough if this poem comes up in your exam to get grade 7 to 9 you also need to talk about context and that means you need to explain what was happening during the time the poem was written or tell me a bit about the poet's life and then link that to the poet's message like so why did they write the poem what were they trying to teach the reader or what message were they trying to convey some interesting context points for the igr are Carol rumans was born in London but also lived in Belfast and Wales as well as traveling widely through Russia and Eastern Europe so this aspect of her life is reflected in her writing which is largely about foreign Customs cultures and language this poem is from the 1993 collection thinking of skins which is centered on political Consciousness in Russia and east Europe now within that collection there is also a focus on the relationship between identity and culture in this poem neither the city nor the country is ever named and this lack of specific detail seems intentional by the poet it's as if rumans wants her poem to be relevant to as many people who have left their homelands as possible and her message in this poem was to highlight the pain and confusion of the Immigrant experience to get across an impression of what it is like to have to leave your home and possibly your family behind and that is everything I hope you found the video helpful if you did please give it a like and don't forget to check out the rest of the videos in this series