A poet is before anything else a person who is passionately in love with language. That definition is the same for a teacher of any language. It is the way we use our words that define our character as rough around the edges or perfectly polished. In both ways it is always open for interpretation (just like art) and for improvement. That is what lead me to choose the subject: Poetry, how to read and write it for my upcoming semester in Dublin’s City University. I always loved writing. Whether it would be a bedtime story or a poem dedicated to someone. In a certain way I thought that writing would lead me to become an author of children novels one day. So for future’s sake I thought it would be very interesting to learn how to write poetry. What is poetry actually? Little did I know that the answer to this question would guide me towards another perspective on humanity, art and chaos. Want to know the answer too? Read on and you might find it.

At the first days of school I felt as a first-former, eager to start class. Apparently there is no way I can start a new semester without getting lost. Luckily there were two guards that helped students find their way. This is something we never had in the Netherlands. Normally there are two people behind a reception that can provide advice, but never two guards that walk around and help students when necessary. Finally during the first class which was Irish women in the 19^th century, I was ready to start. I opened my laptop and the teacher started her class. The manner and tempo of how she started talking was so fast! I could not keep up. My fingers felt like they were running for the gold during the Olympics just to catch everything she was saying. Back home everyone would talk English but it was in a much slower pace. I felt like as if I came from primary school English to do University level English. Nobody waited for you to finish your sentence. You keep up or go home. It frustrated me that I couldn’t make notes at the same rate as the Irish students. Luckily, day by day, bit by bit I progressed. Perseverance always leads to improvement I remembered a wise woman telling me. With that in mind, I practised and tried my best. After a while I improved so much that I didn’t even need to look at my screen to check what I was writing. With my eyes and ears I focused on the teacher and with my hands concentrated on writing, I managed to make the best notes I have ever made in my life. Amazing isn’t it? when you realise how much you’re actually capable of based on the primary skills we possess as humans. Sherlock Holmes once said: ‘To a Great Mind, nothing is little’. Improving these small skills in ways I never imagined guided me to a greater conclusion. Namely that just by pushing myself to my limits, I realised limits are just another way of letting your mind tell you, you can’t, even though you can. I’m sure even Obama agrees with me on that (Yes we can!).

Talking about limits, there was another subject I will never forget. The first class I got from Miss Kitt, the poetry lecturer was the most memorable. The classroom was like a lecture hall, with a long line of tables on each uprising floor. Miss Kitt started her class without waiting for silence from the students. This never happens in the Netherlands. She read Samuel Johnson’s, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) out loud using all of her lung capacity. Mrs Kitt read it with a kind of passion and ambience that took my breath away. For the readers that don’t know, I am usually the Hermoine of class that wants to ask a question or say the answer. On the contrary to my normal self I was taken aback by her wits and way of reading poems that I did not want to miss out on listening. Back home the poems are read in a professional way. But here, in Dublin, I got to listen to a lecturer that made me feel her passion as a teacher. It gave me goose bumps. Even though she talked in the same pace as the teacher I got before her, Miss Kitt’s intonation showed you the emotions behind the poem. Whether you’re dyslectic or even illiterate, I assure you ,after listening to her, you would fall in love over just a few simple combination of words.

A few weeks passed by and we started talking about Walt Whitman, the ‘first’ American poet. His way of writing poems was new and revolutionary at that time. Why and How? Because he wrote poems on the less beautiful and more vulgar sides of life. He ended and started sentences without any of the usual structures or rhythms. The reason to be that life is not all about rules and fairy tales. He showed the chaos of life and the beauty of it. He wrote about maggots in the dirt eating the flesh of humans before us. Of men and women having sex and the emotions behind it during a time where all of it was taboo. The teachers started making jokes in between the speedy-Gonzales pace of information thrown at us to lighten the mood. Almost at the end of the class a student asked the lecturer why poems never go straight to the point or be clear of what they mean. ‘Poetry doesn’t exist to be clear, my dear. It is there to show us the chaos of life and appreciate it as art’  the teacher answered. For a brief moment me and my fellow classmates were taking his words in even though class was already finished and the next line of students were waiting for us to leave.

That sentence and how it affected the whole class astounded me. It made me realise the power a teacher has over the minds of the newer generation. How on earth can I become that kind of a teacher? It set a spark into my soul that made my love for teaching grow into a bonfire. All the classes confirmed me that I was exactly where Destiny wanted me to be. In an unknown place of learning where I started off not knowing anyone. Where will this adventure take me next?

That answer you will read in the next blog of G’s McTravels.