ON THE MOVE

Former U.K. Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen illuminates issues of human migration by attempting to fill the gaps in his Jewish family history.

His introduction explains the distinctions between migrant and refugee and divides the collection of mostly free-verse poems into four thematic sections. In the first section, “Family and Friends,” Rosen explores his immigrant roots by reflecting on significant experiences and people from his childhood. In one deceptively simple poem, “The Songs My Father Sings,” he ponders his paternal ancestry: “Where has my father been? / Who sang the songs that he now sings / and what do the songs mean?” Two poems recall antisemitic slights by Rosen’s childhood classmates. The second section, “The War,” pieces together parental reminiscences of World War II and of family travels in postwar Europe. In “The Migrants in Me,” the potent third section, Rosen investigates missing family members. His father testifies, “I had two French uncles. / They were in France / at the beginning of the war. / They weren’t there at the end.” In the narrative poem “Finding Out,” Rosen painstakingly unearths information about these uncles—Oscar and Martin—and discovers old photos of them in a long-hidden box of family memorabilia. A duad of wrenching poems directly address Oscar and his wife, Rachel, imagining their emotions during escape, discovery by Nazis, and shipment to Auschwitz. Yet another poignant elegy, “Cousin Michael,” memorializes Rosen’s father’s cousin, evacuated to safety as a teen by parents he’d never see again. The final section, “On the Move Again,” explores the disruptions that uproot people and bring different cultures into contact. In Blake’s blue-washed watercolors, faceless figures trek beneath glowering, threatening skies.

A graceful tapestry weaving together personal and global perspectives and a heart-rending memoir of human endurance.