English Speech The concept of a journey is universal, considered a fundamental aspect within humanity, we will all take countless journeys within our lives, whether they may be inner, physical, and imaginative or a combination of these, they shape us as a person, our perspectives and feelings. Every person in the world will partake in some type of journey within their lives. This idea of journeys is extensively explored throughout Peter Skrzynecki’s poems, ‘Postcard’ and ‘Migrant Hostel’. These texts are a recollection of Skrzynecki’s own experiences, specifically his conflicting relationship with his father stemming from his distancing of Polish Culture, ultimately leading to his perceived sense of exclusion. Each of these texts involves a distinction between experiences, imposing a sense of alienation, independence and isolation.
Peter Skrzynecki’s ‘Postcard’ is a acknowledgement to the pride and patience in the presence of loss and hardship to the poet’s father Feliks whose physical journey from Europe to Australia, from one culture to another, echoes through the poem and it’s clear that the impact of the journey is as strong for the son as for the father. Peter Skrzynecki deals with the emotional consequences of the physical journey. The simile “like an only child” shows the extent of love and devotion to the garden as Feliks walks around it and in an overemphasis “sweeps its path ten times around the world”, as if he is reliving his journey across the world and identifying and confirming his place in the new country. In the second stanza, Peter directs the focus to the darkened cracked hands, creates powerful images of hard, physical labour. There is a real sense of admiration of Peter’s attitude to his father; Physical journeys also entail emotional and spiritual journeys. As Peter’s culture is different from his parents, as he is Australian and they are Polish, this poem ‘postcard’ represents an emotional journey and a promised physical journey to come.
‘ Migrant Hostel’ is one of Peter Skrzynecki’s poems which expresses the consequences of a physical journey and a key idea it expresses is that towards the end of a physical journey, there can be provoked desire for something familiar to remind the Journee of home. This is clearly communicated in the first few lines of the second stanza which reads “nationalities sought/each other out instinctively –/like a homing pigeon/circling to get its bearings.” In this line, the audience is confronted with an image of a large group of people from all different types of cultures and races, looking for those with whom they share accents and nationalities with. It creates in the reader’s mind also a sense of disorientation felt by the ‘characters’ of the text who feel as though they do not know where they are, “like a homing pigeon/circling to get its bearings” a simile which has a connotation of a bird who has been released from its cage far away from home and is trying to work out which direction home is. The concept of alienation is explored extensively throughout ‘migrant hostel’

The expression of a Journey is explored throughout ‘Mud, Sweat, and Tears’ novel by Bear Grylls. ‘Mud,