Belonging

“This might be where I come from, but do I really belong here? That’s the past, and you can’t let the past run your life”— <Looking for Alibrandi>. This quote questioned the statement; therefore does building connections always allow us to create a source of stability and belonging? Skrzynecki consistently communicates his feeling of dislocation and isolation, the sense of not belonging through his poem, and all of them reveal the tension between belonging and not belonging. In his two poems, Feliks Skrzynecki and St Patrick’s College, it demonstrates the confusion of his identity and the form of dislocation within his own culture.
      “Feliks Skrzynecki” is a poem that illustrates a glimpse into a complex and enigmatic man from the subjective perspective of the poet. In the first line ‘My gentle father’ it reveals the poet’s love and admiration for his father’s stoic optimism in facing the hardship of his life. ‘They dug cancer out of his foot, / his comment was: ‘but I’m alive’. Through this imaginary, it emphasises Feliks’s positive nature, a survivor and it illustrates the declaration which brings the sense where the son wonders if he could ever emulate his father. Despite the fact that his father was a migrant, the simile ‘Loved his garden like an only child’ shows how his father is devoted to the place he has created, treating it preciously, this gives us the sense of the father’s belonging the world he has created, and suggesting a barrier between the father and son. The poet’s father has made a transition from what is known, tacitly understood and familiar to a new world marked by the different social, political and cultural norms. The poet experiences his own form of alienation, not because of the migration process buy by being the son of those who have undertaken such an upheaval in their lives. He looks on and listens rather than participates; acknowledging his father’s connection with his garden but is unable to share. The conflicting idea of... [continues]

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