{"id":6075,"date":"2017-03-10T07:09:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T07:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=6075"},"modified":"2023-06-27T11:56:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T11:56:51","slug":"home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2017\/03\/10\/home\/","title":{"rendered":"Home by Neetha Kunaratnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOME by\u00a0Neetha Kunaratnam<\/strong><\/p>\n

June 23, 2016<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Go Home<\/em>. We voted leave\u2026
\n<\/em>Her indignant jaw trembled
\nas she seethed,<\/p>\n

and the deadpan response
\nI might have mustered
\nfroze on my lips,<\/p>\n

as she brandished
\na crumpled flyer
\nand unleashed its litany of stats.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going\u00a0<\/em>I said
\nand melted away,
\ntoo saddened to understand<\/p>\n

how the idea
\nof nation thrives on
\nits intransigent borders,<\/p>\n

how our identity was hijacked
\nby a binary ballot
\nendorsed by three Brexiteers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

II<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Home<\/em>\u00a0is a sanctuary where
\nmy daughter decants a kaleidoscope of watercolours
\nonto her honeyed skin,<\/p>\n

and we smile at our favourite animation
\nas a lion communes with all the animals
\nin a stop-motion multicultural vision.<\/p>\n

Home<\/em>\u00a0is the kitchen where we concoct fusions
\nwith spices we\u2019ve blended by hand
\nin an heirloom pestle and mortar.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0home<\/em>\u00a0is my mother in whom for years
\nI was landlocked,
\nwhen she was my country and compass,<\/p>\n

and all I knew was hunger and impulse,
\nand territory was a concept pinned to a wall
\nlike a patchwork atlas made of felt.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

III<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In this England of unkindness
\nsanctioned by suits waxing impolitic
\ntheir xenophobic bleats,<\/p>\n

I heard that a pregnant friend,
\nbetraying her German lilt,
\nwas told to repatriate<\/p>\n

by a man close to death,
\nas she consoled her feverish child
\nin the doctor\u2019s waiting room.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IV<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And I want to say\u00a0home is where<\/em>\u00a0the heart is<\/em>, and ask those who would banish us
\nto grip my arteries with sullen fists, and pull the sinews taut like guy ropes
\nso I can camp out\u00a0<\/em>under my heart\u2019s stretched skin,
\nand be nomadic\u00a0<\/em>wherever\u00a0<\/em>they want
\nto shunt me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

V<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider\u2026<\/p>\n

When last I flew\u00a0home,\u00a0<\/em>to the island my father had quit
\nbefore it spliced into tribes,<\/p>\n

I sought to subvert the exile my parents had imposed
\nfor fear of persecution and petrol bombs.<\/p>\n

I imagined my race could be a badge woven
\nfrom snippets of a phrasebook,<\/p>\n

as I journeyed\u00a0home<\/em>\u00a0in the days
\nafter the armistice had been brokered<\/p>\n

to see, in twenty years away,
\nthat the country had been broken,<\/p>\n

and I was stranded
\nlike a tourist clutching his\u00a0Lonely Planet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go Home?<\/em>\u00a0Or\u00a0get lost<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know about you but I\u2019ve been thinking about the result of the EU referendum almost non-stop since I woke up on the morning of 24 June 2016. I\u2019d love to be able to blog about Neetha Kunaratnam’s\u00a0poem Home\u00a0<\/em>without getting political but how can I? The poem itself is intensely political; the date stamp and the very first line shout that loud and clear:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2018Go Home. We voted leave<\/em>\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n

This poem feels to me like a provocation. What is home?\u00a0Where<\/em>\u00a0is home?<\/p>\n

The fact is, the notion of \u2018home\u2019 changed for a great many people in the aftermath of the referendum. A feeling of displacement and unbelonging that continues due to the botched approach to the negotiations. Ever since that \u2018binary ballot\u2019, we\u2019ve been pulled into one camp or the other regardless of the nuances of our decision to vote this way or that.<\/p>\n

Neetha Kunaratnam\u2019s poem plays out over five sections, each giving us a different understanding of \u2018home\u2019. What strikes me most is that the cumulative effect of the individual sections highlights the lack of agency that the speaker has. Life is happening to him, around him. In the first section the speaker\u2019s deadpan response doesn\u2019t come and instead he melts away. In the fourth he waits to be moved on to \u2018wherever they want \/ to shunt me.\u2019 In the fifth he is stranded. It feels very much like there is no \u2018home\u2019<\/em>\u00a0to go to.<\/p>\n

Section II creates a cosy world where family equals safety and security, where it is both a \u2018sanctuary\u2019 and a place to find yourself \u2018landlocked\u2019. The warmth and familiarity of the imagery contrasts with the tone of fear and uncertainty that runs through the rest of the poem. Section III is the only section that doesn\u2019t directly reference \u2018home\u2019. It moves away from specifics and the personal experience of the speaker, and \u2018unkindness\u2019 of the \u2018suits\u2019 and the \u2018man close to death\u2019 feel too blunt but maybe bluntness is what\u2019s called for.\u00a0Section IV is perhaps my favourite. The visceral image created is so extreme and surreal, it\u2019s almost like a scream of desperation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 And I want to say\u00a0home is where the heart is<\/em>, and ask those who would banish us
\nto grip my arteries with sullen fists, and pull the sinews taut like guy ropes
\nso I can camp out under my heart\u2019s stretched skin,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m drawn to this poem because it goes some way to articulating the shock of having to unexpectedly revaluate what \u2018home\u2019 means. I think this poem works best if you read it aloud. become the speaker, hear what he has to say.\u00a0Poetry allows us to feel what it might be like for someone in positions we might be lucky enough to have no experience of. It also allows us to find sanctuary when a poet recreates an experience we recognise only too well. The last line of the poem is what unsettles me most.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2018Go Home<\/em>? Or\u00a0get lost<\/em>?\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Degna Stone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HOME by\u00a0Neetha Kunaratnam June 23, 2016 \u00a0 I Go Home. We voted leave\u2026 Her indignant jaw trembled as she seethed, and the deadpan response I might have mustered froze on my lips, as she brandished a crumpled flyer and unleashed its litany of stats. I\u2019m going\u00a0I said and melted away, too saddened to understand how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":6067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-6075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-neetha-kunaratnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6075"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6116,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6075\/revisions\/6116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}