Evaluation of Peter Skrzynecki’s Poems on the Theme of Belonging

962 Words4 Pages
Evaluation of Peter Skrzynecki’s poems on the theme of Belonging Peter Skrzynecki’s poems are autobiographical revelations of his personal experience as a migrant youth grappling with the concept of ‘belonging’ in a new country. Migrant Hostel, 10 Mary’s Street and St Patrick’s are good examples of this aspect of his poems. He explores the varied perceptions of different migrant families in his attempt to discover his true identity. His poems effectively engage the readers and provoke them to reflect on their individual understanding of the sense of ‘belonging’ and ‘not belonging’ from their own personal experiences. The use of modern poetic structures and the multifarious figures of speech he employs in his poems, stimulate the reader’s mental images to help them obtain a better perception of the concept of assimilation and alienation of diasporas in a foreign land. Every ‘second generation’ culturally and linguistically diverse migrant youth can easily align with the stream of thoughts that project themselves in the self-evaluative poems of Peter. This is evident in the poems Feliks Skrzynecki wherein he states that his father and his friends gathered “reminisced About farms” he started “pegging” his “tents Further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall” The nagging predicament of yearning to belong combined with the fear of rejection and exclusion or discrimination due to unique features that are inherent, form an integral part of the content of his poems like St. Patrick’s where he depicts “the darkness around me” as indicative of the inability to feel any real sense of belonging. Peter highlights the dilemma that plagued him and describes his personal experiences with a unique perspective influenced by the writings of authors like James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Wilfred Owen, W.B.Yeats, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence. It manifests the dichotomy between two generations

More about Evaluation of Peter Skrzynecki’s Poems on the Theme of Belonging

Open Document