We need a dose of poetry, let English teachers everywhere swoon

Lately, I have taken to learning poetry off by heart, by choice. English teachers everywhere swoon.

Admittedly, I’m only three poems in and the longest is 18 lines, but it’s a start. And, sure, it didn’t begin as my idea, but as a challenge in the New York Times to learn a poem off pat, in this instance the marvellous Recuerdo, by Edna St Vincent Millay.

I read it and knew I wanted it to be part of me forever. The last time I did that, I was in standard eight and incensed by the poem My Name by Magoleng wa Selepe.

So I committed it to memory and declaimed it on stage at a Christmas concert as if I was the black protagonist, even collapsing dramatically for the opening couplet, which I have never forgotten: “Look what they have done to my name, the wonderful name of my great-great-grandmother…”

Then I completely mangled the next bit. That’s the name in question: Nomgqibelo Ncamisile Mnqhibisa. I always used to enjoy a good poem – for me, this meant it had some rhyme or rhythm or repetition to hook the brain – but it’s ages since I read poetry for pleasure – and as for learning it by heart? Hah!

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But, while everything else about school faded away, segments of poems I once drank in as nectar in English class still float into my mind, like sunlight on water.

On receiving an envelope, I might recall: “None will hear the postman’s knock without a quickening of the heart, for who can bear to feel himself forgotten?” (WH Auden).

On watching the TV news, I’ll think “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”, and as I wonder why we aren’t all on the streets in rage, I’ll remember: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” (WB Yeats).

When putting on a brave face while collapsing inside, I’ll hear clearly in my heart: “I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning.” (Stevie Smith). And now, three new poems later in a crazy world, I find myself repeating them, reaching for them like a tonic.

Perhaps then we all could use a poetry prescription, to whisper quietly to ourselves in solace: “When I’m a veteran with only one eye, I shall do nothing but look at the sky.” (Auden again.)

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