Poet and Professor Michael M. Coroza has mesmerised a workshop of young students with a heartfelt plea to learn a love for language and a passion for poetry as he read and explained some of his favourite works.

The Doctor of Philosophy from Ateneo De Manila University in the Philippines, captivated his audience with one of the most inspiring sessions at the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, engaging them with an artistic rather than academic eye.

He presented the 14 and 15-year olds with a poem, ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos Williams.

“We can see that this poem has just eight lines and sixteen words, but poetry is a wonderful vehicle to express so much without having to say a lot. It is a unique work of art in terms of its structure, with a distinct lack of punctuation and second lines of one word which contains two syllables. Often the meaning of a poem is not as important as its existence – a poem doesn’t have to mean, it has to be.

“There have been a million interpretations of this poem, but for me it paints a vivid and beautiful image of the subject, the time and the environment without meaning anything. When we write poetry, we should all aim to paint our own images using words as our colours.”

Towards the end of the highly interactive workshop, called ‘Weaving my Poem’, Dr. Coroza told the students they were all capable of being poets: “If you love poems, you will go on to be a poet and we will meet again,” he said. “Maybe not here, but somewhere and you will be young poets and I will probably be an old, old poet, but we will meet as equals and discuss the passion we share for our art.”

The session was due to conclude with an exercise where each member of the class handed in a 3-4 line ‘coherent metaphor’, but as time ran out, Dr. Coroza shared his email address with them all and encouraged them to send their work for him to review online.

After the workshop he said: “These young visitors all have the potential to be poets. They have a desire to learn and an insight into what constitutes poetry in its many guises. Their participation was hugely encouraging and I would love to spend more time hearing them as much as them listening to me”