10 Mary Street Skrzynecki Analysis

“Belonging is a means of discovering your place in the world. Once you are accepted, there is a continuous process of learning and understanding. Sometimes we even learn that we in fact do not belong.”
Peter Skrzynecki uses poems and poetic techniques to effectively reflect on his past life in order to try and gain a better understanding of his present and future life.
Two poems that really stood out to me were that of “10 Mary Street” and “St Patricks College”. Both poems reflect the area of study we have been looking at “Belonging”. Each poem uses poetic techniques such as:
 Structure
 Similes
 Metaphors
 Imagery
 Alliteration
 First person
Starting with “10 Mary Street” I believe this poem to be about a boy, his parents and the family home, and everyone here can relate to that right?
“10 Mary
Firstly looking at structure, just from glancing at the poem we can see the length of the stanzas and the lengths of the lines are uneven. This may reflect that there was little structure in the life of Peter Skrzynecki, but when we begin to read into the poem, we can see that there is a slight glimpse of structure of him doing the daily routine of him leaving the house and going off o school, and returning home in the evening.
Looking into the first stanza we see that Peter Skrzynecki is using the essence of time to depict belonging for example, “For nineteen years” which highlights the importance of how long they were actually situated in their home of 10 Mary Street.
We see the first stanza talking about the beginning of the day through the use of similes, for example “Each morning shut the house like a well-oiled lock”. Linking back to structure we see that this quote shows that there was a little bit of structure to Peter Skrzynecki’s life, as both he and his parents would depart the house at the same time each