Skryznecki_No_10_Mary_St

10 Mary St by Peter Skryznecki Skrzynecki’s poem 10 Mary Street explores the sense of belonging through the story that Peter tells about the house he, his mother Kornelia and his father Feliks moved into in 1951 after arriving in Australia from Poland. He describes his childhood while living at 10 Mary St. Peter expresses a strong sense of belonging towards his family home and garden. He uses the first person perspective and literary devices such as enjambment, simile, metaphor and alliteration when describing everyday activities which create vivid imagery showing the strong sense of belonging they have to family life. The use of simile creates effective images of the family’s daily routines “each morning..like a well-oiled lock” which conveys the message that what they did everyday just happened smoothly without a problem. The security, stability and connection Peter has with his parents is conveyed throughout the poem. Skryznecki uses repetition to emphasise time which is a recurring theme throughout the poem 10 Mary St “nineteen years”. This highlights the period of time they spent at 10 Mary St which establishes a long association with the house. There is a feeling of belonging to this home a sense of harmony. The garden is represented as an important place where they belonged, Peter uses simile “watered plants- grew potatoes... like adopted children”. This reinforces the importance that the garden has on their family life and the stability it gives them. The garden is an important place for Peter as well, it is a place he goes to eat “like a hungry bird”, eating from its fruit until he is “bursting at the seams”, this use of figurative speech emphasises that he ate a lot out of his garden and conveys the feeling that he had a lot of pleasure and happiness and belonging to this house and garden. Skrznecki creates a contrast with the inside and outside of the house, he depicts the inside as a safe comfortable place using personification to give the house a human quality to emphasise that the house was what made the family belong to their new country “the house, with its china-blue coat”. The outside is shown as an unwelcoming place where the family must go, but do not really belong. Peter reveals in the poem a sense of not belonging with the outside community “still too narrow bridge”. The fourth stanza becomes representational of the post-war Australian migrant experience, where the family “kept pre-war Europe alive” with photographs