Displacement in the Poetry of 'Exiliance': Three Refugee Poets from the Indian Ocean and Asia

Résumé En

This article focuses on three poets (Salah Faik, Adeeb Kamal Ad-Deen and Ahmatjan Osman) who have fled their countries and thus experienced the internal or external disorders caused by geographical displacement. Refugee poetry is usually read as a testimony of the suffering connected with remoteness, a commemoration of the abandoned homeland and a reflection on the effects of migration, on the one hand on the poet's identity and on the other hand his relationship with the world. The article argues, however, that what can be termed 'the poetry of exiliance' - a word borrowed from Alexis Nouss - is not simply linked to the displacement of refugees, but rather to a new literary space where writing is itself an experience of displacement. In other words, it discusses the way in which such poetry transforms the displacement of refugees that is geographical migration into an experience of exile which is mainly a kind of mystical migration. Typically, the poets analyzed here express not only the dislocation specific to the refugee situation, but the serenity that can be gained through the experience of exile itself.