The Last Oozings

This week I waved farewell to two dear friends. Their shadows slipped between the tall gums as we parted ways, their feet leaving a crunch on the foliage.

For the past seven years of my teaching career, I have held the hands of poets John Keats and William Shakespeare.

Or maybe they’ve held mine.

I haven’t merely analysed their work and taught students to find forced meaning behind a mix of words. 

I have walked with their works. I have lingered on each and every word, over and over, finding new and delicate movements and motions, like leaves lifting ever so slightly to the sun’s mottled light.

I have even trodden their paths.

I took my family on a tour of The Globe and we stood for three hours of Macbeth as groundlings, astonished at the words of 450 years ago. 

I stood in tears on the Spanish Steps, grieving for a 25 year old man’s young life sadly lost over 200 years before.

These poets have been my allies. My fellow lovers of language. They have given me reason to read aloud, to perform their works to a small intimate audience. 

And I have loved every moment.

Teaching is performative. I think that’s why I love it and why it comes naturally to me.

To be a good teacher you need a captive audience - one that will follow you over boulders and step after you across the creek. Students who are confident enough to not worry about getting a little damp along the way because they know you are watching and are ready to reach out a hand.

Teaching poetry in all its forms is highly performative. You must express all that the poet intended, perhaps with MORE verve, so that the passion passes to them, like osmosis.

But as I move, once again, to teaching courses and classes that don’t ‘have to’ learn about these classic poets, I have to consider their worth and the worth of poetry itself. Is the performance of poetry still relevant? Do the messages still resonate? And what value can performing poetry truly bring to our lives?

I like to compare my years with Keats and Shakespeare to meandering through bushland. Perhaps there was a path, a beaten track, but it was never particularly clear. There was always a sense that you would just end up where you needed to go. 

Having scrambled through the dense undergrowth of language for understanding, I think we have to acknowledge that the trail isn’t an easy one for all.

Poetry tends to alienate.

Words highly symbolic or metaphoric can leave most people a little lost, the path definitely overgrown and rocky.

But not all poetry is outwardly complex.

You only have to hear the profound, yet simplistic words of Maya Angelou to see that poetry can be accessible and carry great weight. 

But I think poetry is left wandering unless it is read aloud.

Once a frightened child without a voice, Angelou was encouraged by her teacher to hear herself reading the words of the works she so adored. 

And boy, did she find her voice. Rucksack on her back, she stormed through the terrain, no hill too steep. Her power echoed across the valley of generations.

It is so pleasing that recently there has been a resurgence of the spoken poetic word through young talented performance poets like Georgie Jones and Harry Baker. 

The subtle artistry of their mellow free verse is neither accusatory or self-indulgent. It simply sits in the forest of life, observing the ins and outs of its creatures and occasionally capturing the breeze of the world.

And I don’t think it’s just the words.

They do seem to possess the necessary power to heal, but when you watch these gentle artists, it is their heart and truth that lifts one foot in front of the other along that path of discovery.

Watching them is, as my dear friend Keats put it, like watching ‘the last oozings hours by hours.’

Poetry gives us pause. Necessary time of reflection on all that we are and do and want to be.

As my mate Shakespeare expressed, poetry can break ‘through the foul and ugly mists of vapors’ revealing greatness, courage, strength and resilience.

I will miss these dear hearts.

But I don’t believe those seven years of friendship are lost. They have been the compass that will guide me through the wilderness, their words the hand of North.

And they will be in good company with the young, contemporary poets of the future.

I cannot wait to get to know them.