A powerful note on which to end this selection of great poems about the plight of refugees – and all too relevant in our own times.From Elizabethan plays to tragic war poets, English literature is blessed with some incredibly moving and cleverly constructed verse. In ‘Home’, Shire writes an impassioned poem about the reasons why refugees are forced to leave their homes in search of new ones: as the opening lines have it, nobody leaves home unless ‘home’ is the mouth of a shark. We bring this pick of classic poems about adversity and hardship up to the present with this poem from the contemporary British poet Warsan Shire, who was born in Kenya, to Somali parents, in 1988. A kind of protest poem which is defiant as well as celebratory, ‘Still I Rise’ is about the power of the human spirit to overcome discrimination and hardship, with Angelou specifically reflecting her attitudes as a black American woman. This is a poem by the American poet Maya Angelou (1928-2014), published in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise. Here, we get knives, eyeballs, ashtrays (to ‘cry into’), and other symbols of despair and pain, all inhabiting the ‘room’ that represents Sexton’s troubled life. But Sexton’s poetry is even more stark than Plath’s in confronting the harsh realities of her own life experiences. Sexton (1928-74), who took her own life following a long battle with depression, is often eclipsed by her contemporary and fellow American poet, Sylvia Plath. ‘Coal’ is black, of course, but if you put it under enough pressure, it can produce diamonds. Her poem ‘Coal’ is one of her most frequently anthologised, and sees Lorde harnessing the rage she feels when, for instance, she sees white people’s attitudes to black Americans. Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ The ‘warrior’ is as important as the other words. This is a 1968 poem by the African-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92). The poem highlights the plight of many New Yorkers who had fled death and exchanged it for poverty, and feel displaced and unwelcome in the city. He wrote ‘Refugee Blues’ about the many Jewish immigrants who had fled to the US, and especially New York, from persecution in Europe. Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-73) was born in Yorkshire, England but later moved to the United States. There have been plenty of stumbling-blocks and obstacles, which she likens to tacks, splinters of wood, or torn-up floorboards, and sometimes the wooden stairs she has trodden have been uncarpeted and bare. Using the metaphor of the staircase, she tells him that her life hasn’t been an easy or luxurious progression or climb. ‘Mother to Son’ is one of Hughes’ best-known poems, and sees a mother addressing her son, telling him about how hard and challenging her life has been, and offering him some parental advice. Over the course of a varied career he was a novelist, playwright, social activist, and journalist, but it is for his poetry that Hughes is now best-remembered. Langston Hughes (1901-67) was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. Given the exploitation of cheap labour still occurring around the world, this poem remains all too topical. All day, every day, the woman slaves away at her stitching, yet she remains in ‘poverty, hunger, and dirt’.
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