BELONGING RUBRIC

This Area of Study requires you to explore the ways in which the concept of belonging is represented in and through texts.Perceptions and ideas of belonging, or of not belonging, vary. These perceptions are shaped within personal, cultural, historical and social contexts. A sense of belonging can emerge from the connections made with people, places, groups, communities and the larger world. Within this Area of Study, you may consider aspects of belonging in terms of experiences and notions of identity, relationships, acceptance and understanding.

Texts explore many aspects of belonging, including the potential of the individual to enrich or challenge a community or group. They may reflect the way attitudes to belonging are modified over time. Texts may also represent choices not to belong, or barriers which prevent belonging. Perceptions and ideas of belonging in texts can be constructed through a variety of language modes, forms, features and structures. In engaging with the text, a responder may experience and understand the possibilities presented by a sense of belonging to, or exclusion from the text and the world it represents. This engagement may be influenced by the different ways perspectives are given voice in or are absent from a text.

In your responses and compositions examine, question, and reflect and speculate on:• how the concept of belonging is conveyed through the representations of people, relationships, ideas, places, events, and societies that they encounter in the prescribed text and texts of their own choosing related to the Area of Study• assumptions underlying various representations of the concept of belonging• how the composer’s choice of language modes, forms, features and structures shapes and is shaped by a sense of belonging• their own experiences of belonging, in a variety of contexts• the ways in which they perceive the world through texts• the ways in which exploring the concept and significance of belonging may broaden and deepen their understanding of themselves and their world.

Feliks Skrzynecki

My gentle fatherKept pace only with the JonesesOf his own mind’s making –Loved his garden like an only child,Spent years walking its perimeterFrom sunrise to sleep.Alert, brisk and silent,He swept its pathsTen times around the world.

Hands darkenedFrom cement, fingers with cracksLike the sods he broke,I often wondered how he existedOn five or six hours’ sleep each night –Why his arms didn’t fall offFrom the soil he turnedAnd tobacco he rolled.

His Polish friendsAlways shook hands too violently,I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,That formal addressI never got used to.Talking, they reminiscedAbout farms where paddocks floweredWith corn and wheat,Horses they bred, pigsThey were skilled in slaughtering.Five years of forced labour in GermanyDid not dull the softness of his blue eyes

I never once heardHim complain of work, the weatherOr pain. When twiceThey dug cancer out of his foot,His comment was: ‘but I’m alive’.

Growing older, IRemember words he taught me,Remnants of a languageI inherited unknowingly –The curse that damnedA crew-cut, grey-hairedDepartment clerkWho asked me in dancing-bear grunts:‘Did your father ever attempt to learn English?’

On the back steps of his house,Bordered by golden cypress,Lawns – geraniums youngerThan both parents,My father sits out the eveningWith his dog, smoking,Watching stars and street lights come on,Happy as I have never been.

At thirteen,Stumbling over tenses in Caesar’s Gallic War,I forgot my first Polish word.He repeated it so I never forgot.After that, like a dumb prophet,Watched me pegging my tentsFurther and further south of Hadrian’s Wall.

Postcard

A post card sent by a friend

Haunts meSince its arrival –Warsaw: Panorama of the Old Town He requests I show itTo my parents.

Red buses on a bridgeEmerging from a corner –High-rise flats and somethingLike a park bordersThe river with its concrete pylons.The sky’s the brightest shade.

Warsaw, Old Town,I never knew youExcept in the third person –Great cityThat bombs destroyed,Its people massacredOr exiled – You survived In the mindsOf a dying generationHalf a world away.They shelter youAnd defend the patternsOf your remaking,Condemn ypur politics,Cherish your old religionAnd drink to freedomUnder the White Eagle’s flag.

For the moment,I repeat, I never knew you,Let me be.I’ve seen red buses ElsewhereAnd all rivers haveAn obstinate galre.My fatherWill be proudOf your domes and towers,My motherWill speak of herBeloved Ukraine.What’s my choiceTo be?

I can give you The recognitionOf eyesight and praise.What moreDo you wantBesidesThe gift of despair?

I stareAt the photographAnd refuse to answerThe voices Of red gablesAnd a cloudless sky.

On the river’s bankA lone treeWhispers:“We will meetBefore you die.”