Mapping the imaginary homelands: Hostility, refugeeism and exile in select poems

Fiction evolves from reality. Poets and writers create fiction considering their contemporary issues and troubles in the country. During wars and totalitarianism regime, writings develop a somber tone which point out their dispossession and identity crisis in a foreign land. In this paper, a critical study of the themes hostility, refugeeism and disposition are explored with reference to the politics. The researcher aims to analyze three poets from three different countries and also takes four poems for study. The disposed Jewish immigrant fleeing the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism in Auden’s “Refugee Blues”, the deep haunting sense of exile in “Emmigrant’s Lament” and “Concerning the Label Emigrant. B. Brecht” along with the crude painting of the war-torn Africa in Achebe’s poetry forms the main research area of the paper. The paper critically examines each singular detailing of how the minds of refugee evolve through the process of exile and hostility in times of war and religious persecution. Links are also drawn with the work of the Anglo-American poet Auden who has himself migrated from England; the German poet, Brecht’s work in relation to questions of political propaganda and exile and the Nigerian poet Achebe who will be discussed in the varying depths regarding the impact of being a refugee/immigrant/displaced person with no identity.