Adapting to a new homeland

 Honoring the resilience and creativity of ancestors in new lands.

Published in Harper’s Weekly, (New York) November 7, 1874, Public Domain.

Immigrating is not just about arrival. It's also about adaptation. Newly planted immigrants, even if they're meeting family and friends in a new land, need to learn new customs, possibly a new language, find work, and build community. All of this effort requires resilience and creativity.

📚 Poems and books inspired by adaptation

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• Li-Young Lee’s poems and Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry

• Migration: New & Selected Poems by W. S. Merwin. This tome presents generous helpings from more than a dozen collections by former United States Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin

• Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings (2022), edited by Sonia Guiñansaca and others. With thirty carefully selected poems, short stories, and excerpts spanning three hundred years and twenty-five countries, the collection brings together luminaries, emerging writers, and others who have earned a wide following in their home countries but have been less recognized in the Anglophone world.

🖋️Poetry Form Spotlight: Free Verse Prose Poem

A prose poem in free verse allows storytelling without strict line breaks while retaining poetic devices.

• "48 of the Best Free Verse Poems From Contemporary Poets" from BookRiot - A great way to learn more about this poetry form and to understand that any length or shape to the poem works as long as you utilize punctuation, line breaks, and vocabulary with flair.
• "Prose and poetry techniques: Free verse", from Victoria and Albert Museum.
• "How to Write a Free Verse Poem: Writing Poetry Without Fixed Form" from Writers.com.

✅ Checklist

☐ Identify challenges and achievements of your immigrant ancestors
☐ Focus on daily life: work, language, traditions, friendships
☐ Use figurative language
☐ Write in free verse prose
☐ End with a reflection on their impact on future generations

✍️Mini-Prompt

Write a prose poem about a day in your ancestor’s life after arriving in their new home. Include sensory details and small victories. You don't have to include every detail about their arrival, such as the name of the ship or train, the port of entry, or their fears. Instead, write using the five senses: What did they see, smell, taste, hear, or touch that connects them to this new land in a way they didn't connect in their homeland?

💬 Call to action

Share the poem with your genealogy circle or online family group. I'm anxious for someone to share their poems here! Bring it on!