Word Bank

Maternal, Wisdom, Kin, Connection

Brief Description

ACE reverts to a childlike state as she receives keys of wisdom from her adopted and traditional grandmother, bringing them together to share their maternal influence.

Like ‘Leaves’, this poem is a meditation on the relationship between a girl and an older relative. Whereas ‘Leaves’ was concerned with the speaker’s father, ‘Key’ is focused on the girl’s relationship with her grandmother.

The grandmother’s bedroom is a private place, and the girl is fascinated by what goes on in there: ‘sometimes she smells the faint hint of smoke / hears the slight crackling of fire / on those days she hears laughter’.

She is never allowed in and, as she grows up, she realises that there are some sides to her grandmother that she will never understand. The ‘key’ of the title could be understood as a metaphor for the ability to access or understand her grandmother’s perspective on the world. By the end of the poem, she has realised that she will never fully achieve this, despite their shared family identity. 

The poem ‘Key’ touches on the different influences that have been involved in creating a sense of identity by showing Eckermann standing outside a door – on a threshold between different worlds. 

Identity in Key

• the grandmother represents the past

• the granddaughter represents the future

• the grandmother holds the key to the past in which the grand child is eager to find as it holds significance to her identity and culture.

Annotations

Analysis Table

PEEL Paragraph on Key

Personal and collective identity is shaped by language and culture and due to this can be incredibly complex. Ali Cobby Eckermann uses the recurring motif of the threshold to represent her liminal identity in her poem 'Key'. The thresholds represented include those of the past and the future, black and white, and Aboriginal and European cultures. The door symbolises the cultural barriers that prevent her from fully understanding her Aboriginal grandmother, as reflected in the anaphora of "no key hole to the future / and no vision to the past." With the looming passing of her grandmother the persona will lose her only conduit to the past and this will limit her future because it will constrain her ability to know herself. Cobby Eckermann's complex, liminal identity is further developed through the visual contrast highlighted in "she stands / on the rim where light and shadow meet". The word light here connotes white and therefore her European heritage, while the shadow connotes dark and therefore her black, Aboriginal identity. While they are separate, they are also portrayed as 'meeting' at the rim, therefore connoting a harmony exists between the two aspects of her identity. This visual harmony represents the cohesion Cobby Eckermann has been able to achieve in her later life as she has reconnected with her Aboriginal cultural identity, while also maintaining her European one. As can be seen, Cobby Eckermann's employment of recurring motifs and visual contrast effectively represents the complex identities that emerge when individuals are shaped by more than one language or culture.