in this essay I will present the ways in which the power of conflict is displayed within two poems, the poems that I have selected to write about are ‘The émigrée’ by Carol Reumens and ‘Kamikaze’ by Beatrice Garland.

The poem ‘The emigrée’ by Carol Reumens is based on a woman who recalls everything she knows about the country she was pushed out of as a child due to conflict within it.  She tell us how even though the country is ‘at war and sick with tyrants’ she is ‘branded by an impression of sunlight’.  She also tell us how in this new country she is oppressed because of her ‘dark skin’ and it is now banned by the state to talk about her country.  The power of conflict in this poem is presented in the fact that she has been pushed out of her country due to conflict within the country.

On the other hand, the poem ‘kamikaze’ by Beatrice Garland is about a Japanese kamikaze soldier who has been ordered to go and fly a plane into a warship belonging to the Americans.  However, halfway there he decides to turn around because of everything that he can see around him he has an overpowering wave of nostalgia as he remembers all of the things that he did when he was a young boy, for instance he remembers how he used to wait for his fathers fishing boat to return to shore and how he and his brothers used to buid cairns of pebbles and see who’s could withstand the turbulent inrush of the tide.  When he arrives at his home, his neighbours and family do not speak to him, the only people that talk to him are the children, however slowly, slowly the children begin to not speak to him, they had been taught not to love him as they used to.  This turn of events could be seen as the kamikaze pilot dying socially.  Later on in the poem when we are told that the daughter of the kamikaze pilot is recounting this story to her children she says that he must have wondered which way had been the best way to die.  The power of conflict in this poem is presented as the kamikaze pilot going away from his country to wage war.