Abstract
‘I, Migrant?’ is a narrative poetry sequence that explores themes of language, culture, identity and belonging through the eyes of an Australian living in Den Haag, The Netherlands. The speaker in the poems faces challenges such as seeking work and making friends in a context where she does not speak the dominant language, Dutch. This proves far from easy, destabilising her sense of identity. She questions where and how she can belong. Reluctant to join what she considers “the white ghetto of Den Haag,” the speaker initially attempts to assimilate herself into Dutch culture, but later finds solace in a community of other expats. Within this community, national identities become exaggerated and people morph into stereotypes. The speaker increasingly defines herself as “Australian,” performing this identity both publicly and in private. Beneath the surface there bubbles, however, an awareness that she is acting out a myth. A more genuine sense of belonging emerges, unexpectedly, in an Asian food court, where she converses in Dutch with staff who also speak it as their second language. The speaker concludes that identity is located in language. It is therefore neither fixed nor singular, but multiple and forever changing.
Highlights
Scraps of catalogues, a newspaper article that somebody clipped out—purposefully, carefully—its trimmed edges say that much— its rain-blurred print offers no suggestion why
At the same time, down on the square, a man finishes his black coffee, stubs his cigarette, checks his watch, exhales a wobbly grey oblong, orders another black coffee, rolls another fag. Maybe he fell in love with a Dutch girl, maybe she is married to a diplomat, maybe in their past lives they ran businesses, held degrees, worked fifty hour weeks
Tempting as it may seem at that point, the one thing you must never ever ever do to an Aussie is to tell them, Vegemite is really nothing more than a rip off of Marmite born some ninety-odd years back when a group of colonists sat round a table and said, ‘Well well good show old chap, we’ve got this country quite near sorted
Summary
You fall out of the sky and into the twilight zone of time zones. Zoned out, you go about the business of getting down to busy-ness except that everything here is none of yours. Instead you find yourself tugging at the edges of each day like a Victorian woman at the strings of her corset —tighter—tighter ... The Dutch word horen means both ‘to hear’ and ‘to belong.’. The Dutch word for ‘to be’ and / or ‘become’ is worden. What where when why how in this world can we be and come?. I don’t have the words in any language to explain, I’d rather speak Dutch like a fool than English like an Outsider, would rather trip and stumble over my broken sentences than scale these sheer soapstone exchanges —a slippery wall, no cracks for handholds, no way over, under or through, no glimpse what lies beyond ‘Uh ... small please ...’ I don’t have the words in any language to explain, I’d rather speak Dutch like a fool than English like an Outsider, would rather trip and stumble over my broken sentences than scale these sheer soapstone exchanges —a slippery wall, no cracks for handholds, no way over, under or through, no glimpse what lies beyond
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