In the early 1990’s, during my stint at St. Patrick’s Private School in Kuching, I fell in love with William Wordsworth’s poetry. There, many students were like me, unable to continue studying at public schools because of poor SRP and SPM results. Besides Sunnyhill School, St. Patrick’s was the other institution giving the likes of us the opportunity to complete our secondary education.
The constant sight of Raj, a fellow boarder writing poems, filled me with awe and envy. Unlike me and the other students, he was in what-was-considered-an elite class — the A-Level, learning the British curriculum. A group of voluntary professionals, including a few religious brothers, made up the academic staff. The students were mostly cream of the crop from different schools, treating the A-Level as a stepping stone to studying abroad. Their medium of instruction was totally English.
A top scorer of English Literature, Raj could wax poetic about anything that inspired him. He wrote lots of love letters and poems to his girlfriends and one day, compelled by curisoity, I read a poem he had written and its sensuality amazed me.
Several days later, during a spring-cleaning activity in the boarding house, I spotted on Raj’s bed a photocopied book with dog-eared pages – ‘An Anthology of Poetry’ by William Wordsworth. At the time, I had not the slightest idea about the poet’s legendary status. After a cursory read of the book, I found his wordplay captivating. I asked Raj if I could borrow it for a day or two, but to my surprise, he gave it free to me, explaining that it had originally belonged to a senior and that he had no use of it. Overjoyed, I thanked him and my journey with English Poetry started.
As a Malay-medium student, I had hardly any exposure to English poetry. Plus, my English proficiency was half-baked, so reading Wordsworth’s poems was no easy job. Although the learning of Malay Literature had equipped me with a sufficient knowledge of poetic devices, some words used in the book were still giving me a hard time.
A beginner like myself found it less daunting reading the shorter poems of Wordsworth, and among the first I read was ‘She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways’, one of his five works in the Lucy Series. The message I could pick up was isolation, but I had no idea if the persona — ‘she’, was a fictitious character.
One day, in a bookstore, I chanced upon a dictionary of poetic terms and bought it. To my disappointment, the dictionary did very little in improving my understanding of Wordsworth’s intricate verse. For days I left the book untouched. I had not realised that to fully grasp the beauty of poetry, I should relate it to my personal experience. My obsession with meanings of words was leading me to nowhere.
To direct me along the right track, so that I could experience the intricacies of William Wordsworth’s feelings, a religious brother suggested that I read up some books on him. I decided to pick up the gauntlet. It happened that there were a lot of biographical books in the library, including one on the poet. It was so detailed with his life that I began to figure out his use of some symbols. Reading classic novels helped, too, in light of their similarities in language and issues, especially those existed along the same timeline as the poet’s works — the likes of Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, and Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’. Regular reading of these classics had provided me with the desired insight into Wordsworth’s expansive innerworld, thus making me more empathetic to the whole gamut of his joy and sorrow. Soon, I could reel off some shorter poems of his and write a few of my own, sometimes rewriting his poems in my own words.
My favourite wordsworth poem was ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. The poem, rich in symbolism and rhyming words, tells of the poet’s attempt in brightening up his pensive mood by soaking up the beauty of nature. I had read the poem many times, imagining myself as the poet – drifting through the skies and the galaxy, taking in numerous sights of nature and dancing with them.
Several years later, I graduated as an English language teacher from Maktab Perguruan Sarawak. In my fourth year of teaching, I was surprised to learn that the poem had become a prescribed text for the literture component studied in Forms Four and Five. As only a Lower Secondary teacher, I had no chance to teach the poem, but each time I heard my colleagues sharing about their experiences of teaching the poem, my heart was overflowing with happiness.
Thanks to the Internet, I have found out that the persona in the Lucy Series could be Dorothy Hutchinson, a girl to whom Wordsworth, in his younger days, had never confessed his love, even until she died. The name could have been mentioned in the book I read at St. Patrick’s, but due to some burst of teenage impatience, I must have missed it while skipping some pages. Many pundits, however, still contend that the persona is only a subject of his muse.
At present, no matter how significant science and technology has become, the beauty of poetry still holds sway. More and more modern free verse has sprung up, and merged with science and technology online, where various apps and websites give tutorials on how to write simple poems infused with your own personality. Recently, I became a member of the Malaysian Writers Community and its regular poetry-writing challenges have never failed to give me thrills. Every month, a writing prompt is posted and many like-minded friends are eager to showcase their creativity. Besides giving ‘likes’ to one another, we also exchange constructive comments.
In Miri, Mike, a full time artist, is also an avid lover of poetry. Anywhere he goes, even as far as Beijing and London, he scribbles in a little book a poem or two about any sentiments that strike him. His poems are steeped in personal observations, beauty of nature, politics, human quirkiness and his love of arts. His degree of passion is almost second to none.
Raj, on the other hand, has become a writer of music reviews in New Zealand. His quik wit and his proficient English have landed him the job of a radio show host, too. I am not sure if he still writes poems, but some paragraphs in his reviews have a lyrical flow to them, easily elevating him to one of the best where he lives.
Sometimes, in my lessons, I like to have my students write poems in groups. I go easy on them, not stressing too much on grammar accuracy, but they have never ceased to amaze me with their outside-the-box mindsets. No doubt, life has become uncontrollably hectic. The hot pursuit of materialistic gains has sounded the death knell for many traditional arts. To keep poetry alive, it should continue to be taught at schools in a learner-friendly manner. Poetry is therapeutic, and even if we have become too swamped by stress, we can fall back on it for tranquility. It also offers us a platform to speak up against all odds — a force which is able to offset little by little the relentless, stereotypical frenzy that has long characterised this world.
Hence, let’s shed any shell of pretense, and express the nakedness of our emotions through poetry. The following is a recent poem of mine and I hope you will like it:
Comrade- in-arms
An assemblage framed by darkness
The wilting trees, the jaundiced light, the same dreariness,
The two men, the two stools, the soundless but lucid exchange
The cigarettes, the beer, the solaces that never change.
The hecticness of work may have been over
But deep down fatigue and stress still hover
The presence of each other lends support
In a world running dry of rapport.- By Lo Sin Yee
