Physical Journeys In Peter Skrzynecki's Poetry

In two of Peter Skrzynecki’s poems, Migrant Hostel and Crossing the Red Sea, he has expressed many interesting ideas about physical journeys. Through Crossing the Red Sea, we experience through his work ideas about the effect of a physical journey as it happens, and in Migrant Hostel, we are exposed to his ideas of the consequences of a physical journey when it appears to be in its final stages. Some of these ideas include a desire for something familiar, alienation and finally a chance to express emotions.

Firstly, Migrant Hostel is one of Skrzynecki’s poems which expresses the consequences of a physical journey and a key idea it expresses is that towards the end of a physical journey, there can be aroused a desire for something familiar
The first instance we see this positive effect of the physical journey the migrants undertook is in the second stanza where Skrzynecki notes that “voices left their caves/and silence fell from its shackles”. This personification of the voices and also of the silence is an indication that people were starting to speak. “…the sea continued –/breaking into/walled-up griefs” gives the audience an image of the sea eroding a sandstone wall, a metaphor for the emotions of the migrants, where the sea is their journey on the boat and the wall is their inner wall of grief, trauma and other negative emotions. The physical journey on which they are is breaking down walls and they are finding it gradually easier to deal with all the negative emotions welled up inside them. “Echoes and reflections/of the trust/that men had bartered/for silence” indicates the new ‘agreement’ these men now have where they’ve traded silence for a time to express things they’ve been unable to deal with on their own and through this are now in the healing process which will enable them to meet the end of their physical journey with greater emotional