Defne Tekin, Grade 11
UWC Maastricht
One of my biggest passions in life is reading and occasionally writing poetry. I was introduced to poetry at a very young age by my grandmother who, inspired by her father-in-law who happened to be a successful and relatively well-known poet in Turkey, always read her newly written poems out loud in the house, requesting to know what we thought of them afterwards. My mum, who was also interested in poetry -she had her first poems published in literary magazines when she was nine and won a few small-scale awards after that- was an objectively harsh critic of these. To be honest, when I was younger, I didn’t value my grandmother’s poems much either, but reading them now I think that some of them were actually very well-written. I now also understand the significance of having such early exposure to poetry, and how impactful these experiences have been for me.
About a week after I first arrived at UWC, it was time to choose our courses and form our subject packages. I wanted to take English A Literature because I found the prospect of studying poetry in class very appealing. There was one big problem, however, and that was that “Literature” wasn’t being offered in my free periods. Because I wanted to take French B as my second language and it was only being taught in one class, I had to let go of my dreams to take literature only and take the course Language&Literature instead. After attending English classes for nearly a year, and analyzing texts which didn’t really interest me, during the last two weeks of school -when I was still connecting to classes online- we moved onto the unit of poetry!
Naturally, I was very excited when I found out that we would be studying a collection of poems by Imtiaz Dharker. In the first class of this unit, our teacher introduced Dharker, and we watched an interview of hers. In the interview, Dharker, who explained that she identified as “a Scottish Muslim Calvinist” talked extensively about culture and cultural elements in her poems as well as how her drawings and poems should be regarded as one. She explained that they complemented each other so couldn’t be analyzed without the example from the other art form. I was mostly fascinated by Dharker’s thoughts on culture and how she saw being multi-cultured as a richness. Immediately after class, I read most of her published poems and watched every interview of hers that was available on Youtube. I became obsessed with her poetry as well her personality and idolized her to a great extent. If asked, my parents would probably tell you of the many times that I’ve recited her poems throughout the day to them. I wanted to let everyone around me find out about her if they hadn’t already and benefit from the simple satisfaction that reading them provides one with.
The fact that I fell in love with Dharker’s poems wasn’t only attributable to the poems themselves -which were full of descriptive and carefully picked words as well as symbols which created images in one’s mind as detailed and as realistic as pictures taken by a camera- however, it was also attributable to how our teacher approached learning in general. Whenever we were analyzing a text, we were always reminded that there was no wrong interpretation or answer as long as you could justify your arguments with supporting evidence from the text. I loved this approach, especially because it taught me that there were almost always different views and many possible interpretations of a single text. We were never forced to believe what the teacher thought to be the ‘true’ meaning herself, and in fact, never found out her opinions in detail; we could form our own original opinions. This, I believe, has made our English classes much more interesting in general, ignited my love for poetry, and helped me to discover a new poet whom I now admire. Most importantly, it broadened my horizon in the sense that I became much more open to different perspectives, and realized that you could never actually be sure of what the writer was implying in their works.
About a week after I first arrived at UWC, it was time to choose our courses and form our subject packages. I wanted to take English A Literature because I found the prospect of studying poetry in class very appealing. There was one big problem, however, and that was that “Literature” wasn’t being offered in my free periods. Because I wanted to take French B as my second language and it was only being taught in one class, I had to let go of my dreams to take literature only and take the course Language&Literature instead. After attending English classes for nearly a year, and analyzing texts which didn’t really interest me, during the last two weeks of school -when I was still connecting to classes online- we moved onto the unit of poetry!
Naturally, I was very excited when I found out that we would be studying a collection of poems by Imtiaz Dharker. In the first class of this unit, our teacher introduced Dharker, and we watched an interview of hers. In the interview, Dharker, who explained that she identified as “a Scottish Muslim Calvinist” talked extensively about culture and cultural elements in her poems as well as how her drawings and poems should be regarded as one. She explained that they complemented each other so couldn’t be analyzed without the example from the other art form. I was mostly fascinated by Dharker’s thoughts on culture and how she saw being multi-cultured as a richness. Immediately after class, I read most of her published poems and watched every interview of hers that was available on Youtube. I became obsessed with her poetry as well her personality and idolized her to a great extent. If asked, my parents would probably tell you of the many times that I’ve recited her poems throughout the day to them. I wanted to let everyone around me find out about her if they hadn’t already and benefit from the simple satisfaction that reading them provides one with.
The fact that I fell in love with Dharker’s poems wasn’t only attributable to the poems themselves -which were full of descriptive and carefully picked words as well as symbols which created images in one’s mind as detailed and as realistic as pictures taken by a camera- however, it was also attributable to how our teacher approached learning in general. Whenever we were analyzing a text, we were always reminded that there was no wrong interpretation or answer as long as you could justify your arguments with supporting evidence from the text. I loved this approach, especially because it taught me that there were almost always different views and many possible interpretations of a single text. We were never forced to believe what the teacher thought to be the ‘true’ meaning herself, and in fact, never found out her opinions in detail; we could form our own original opinions. This, I believe, has made our English classes much more interesting in general, ignited my love for poetry, and helped me to discover a new poet whom I now admire. Most importantly, it broadened my horizon in the sense that I became much more open to different perspectives, and realized that you could never actually be sure of what the writer was implying in their works.
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