It's been a while, yo.

Here's my imaginary class on poetry.

When I’m trying to say something about poetry and its form, its function, its fluidity, I imagine what I would want to hear if I’m green. How about if I want to learn something I find boring, like Computer Science? – Now, if I want to begin to understand the mechanisms of the discipline I’ll start at the beginning, which is an oxymoron in itself – our lives are cruel simulations of oxymorons and we never stop to smell the roses, so to speak. I’ll try to learn how Computer Science is done – the coding, the numbers, etcetera etcetera. I’ll ask an expert – perhaps a roommate or classmate who have demonstrable skills in the discipline. With poetry, we already have the experts given to us in middle school, regurgitated in high school, and pummeled into us by the time we reach our third year at university. When I say poetry, I can hear someone crinkling their nose, or my mother physically flinching away from the conversation.

Poetry is vast. Poetry is daunting. But then again, if done well, what isn’t?

I don’t want you to think of Shakespeare’s sonnets or rattle your brain trying to find rhyming words clinking like toy magnets, magically put together by divine inspiration. No, I mean to look around you. Just this much – look around you. Right now, I find poetry in my swollen fingers trying to hit each letter on the keyboard with my nail extensions. The rhythm, the clacking, the one two three…

Poetry isn’t what we’ve been forced to memorise. In fact, poetry memorises us. A poem chooses you, your form, your fingers. I have a lot of favourite poets, some living, most dead or dying slowly in school’s syllabi. One of them is W.H. Auden – and if you’ve not heard of him, type in Four Weddings and a Funeral and listen to its recitation. I studied the same poem in college, and I could see the words awash in blue, mostly because the poem itself is called “Funeral Blues,” but also because the words were not just typed ink – they were – they are, alive. I don’t have synesthesia, and I’m deeply envious of the intermingling of senses. You might intensely dislike poetry and the onus is not on you – not entirely.