I once attended a school near Wellington NZ, which for lack of other schools to
compete against was divided into four 'houses'.
I was in Burns, but for two years nothing about him or by him was mentioned.
There was also Byron (as with Burns we never knew there was anything in his life
children shouldn't be told about)
and Bracken, after NZ's notoriously bad colonial laureate, whose maudlin poem
'Not Understood' went round the world.
This was brought about by the school's first principal, whose name happened to
be Browning.
In my two years there, I don't recall poetry ever figuring in any way,
except on Anzac Day 1949, when a boy was chosen to memorize and recite
Rupert Brooke's sonnet about The Soldier -
with its sentiments about England that resonated in NZ as if NZ was England.
That boy was me.
The taste it gave me for rhyme cadence and eloquence, and the sound of my own
voice in a hushed hall! I date my life-long addictions to April 25, 1949.
Max
Quoting Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]>:
> Baltimore's the only city I know that has a high school
> that calls all its sports teams the Poets.
>
>
> Serving the tri-state area.
>
> Hal
>
> Halvard Johnson
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