It's the way you title 'em...

What can a poet do with a title? More than you might think, I submit. An untitled poem is a wasted opportunity, because a title can be a great way not only to convey information that for some reason you didn't want to put in the actual poem, but to steer your reader along the line of thought you want them to go, without being too obvious about it. A good example is the late Victorian Francis Lauderdale Adams' poem "Hagar", about an unwed mother. Adams, writing for a Bible-literate audience, knows that by associating the girl with Hagar, Abraham's housemaid, he can convey that not only is she an unwed mother, she probably got that way courtesy of some respectable community patriarch. He can also set up the expectation that, in her hour of need, God will intervene to save her and her baby as he did in the Bible story – an expectation Adams will dramatically disappoint. Not a bad dividend from one word.

Here, however, is a one-word title working even harder. This poem by James Sinclair was written for a specific purpose. It is part of the Shetland "Bards in the Bog" project whereby poems, chosen by Jen Hadfield, are displayed in public toilets to attract the world's most captive audience. The particular batch including this one was written for the 2010 event "Hamefarin", when exiles and descendants of exiles returned to visit Shetland from far corners of the world. Shetland, like mainland Scotland, saw a great deal of emigration during the 19th and early 20th centuries as impoverished folk sought a better life elsewhere. Many never returned, and it was their grandchildren, great-grandchildren and even more distant descendants who came at Hamefarin to visit a "homeland" never seen.

The man who speaks this poem is seen at the start of his journey away from his homeland, filling his mind and pockets with memories of where he came from and what made him who he is, as all exiles do – "the wind will fit snug in my wallet". Though hardship may drive his journey, he goes, as many did, in a positive spirit towards a new life; there is a jauntiness about "the sails making dandy trousers", the "bottle of good humour" and "I will wear the sky beneath my hat". He is self-sufficient, an adventurer rather than an object of pity.

And if the poem were called "Emigrant", there would be no more to say about it. But it isn't; its title is "Immigrant", and that makes all the difference. Every emigrant ends up an immigrant; every immigrant was once an emigrant… The poem shows us a man setting out, hopeful, daring, entrepreneurial. The title invites us to wonder what will become of him, and how he will be viewed, at the other end – as a threat, a burden, an object to inspire fear, resentment or pity? It invites us, too, to consider those who are already at the other end of that journey here, and to associate them with the 19th and 20th-century impoverished crofters who set out in search of a new life. Emigrants when they set out, on arrival in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA, they were immigrants, and we can only hope they did not meet the kind of tabloid-inspired suspicion and hostility that greets similar arrivals here today.

And that's an even greater dividend from a single word.

IMMIGRANT by James Sinclair

Fill my pockets with lochs
the wind will fit snug in my wallet.
I will weave a scarf of mackerel, haddock and trout
the good fit of sheep on my feet.
My jacket, knitted peat and heather
with a bottle of good humour for the journey.
Planks of fishing boat bound tight as a belt
the sails making dandy trousers.
My back-pack holds the entire ocean
and last but certainly not least
I will wear the sky beneath my hat.