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Droighneach Form

 

Three years back, I moved from Ireland to Texas.  I started teaching high school that same year.  My partner, who had moved with me from Ireland, also began teaching at the same high school that same year.  I am Irish, and he is from Texas. But to complicate matters, he speaks Irish, and I do not.  I have what we call a “cúpla focal” but no more really, than what I have in Spanish, or French, or German.

My students are obsessed with both Ireland and my partner’s and I’s relationship.  It is as if they are both foreign entities.  Our students will often try to derail classroom activities with questions about where we lived and what we are like outside of school.

“Dr. J, what is a word that the Irish use, that Americans don’t?”

“Dr. Flynn, how old is Dr. J.”

“How would you say ‘I love you’ in Irish?”

“What’s Dr. Flynn’s favorite band?”

“How would you say ‘I hate you’ in Irish?”

“What does “partner” mean?”

“Are you going to have babies? You should have babies.  You’d make great parents.”

Some questions we answer, some we do not.  We will sometimes compare notes after work, and chuckle at what it is they want to know, and why we think they want to know it. Sometimes it is like a pitting of “Mum” against “Dad.”  Well, Dr. J wouldn’t tell us, but Dr. Flynn did.  

“Oh, she did, did she?”

Once, I had had a rather upsetting class period, and I went to J to recoup.  My eyes always betray me though, and when I got back to my next class, my students could tell I had been crying.  After I had got them writing, one of them asked to speak with me outside.  She asked me if everything was okay, and she looked very concerned.  She asked what had happened, and I said it was nothing for her to worry about, that I was doing just fine, thank you.  And then her eyes filled up with tears and she asked, “did you and Dr. J break up? Because, I couldn’t bear it!”

I hugged her close to me and said, “Oh dearheart, no. We are fine! This was work related.” She sighed and relaxed, then we went back inside.  

As teachers, we have a interesting kind of relationship with the youth. We aren’t their parents, we aren’t their friends, but we are more than just purveyors of information.    We have a parental relationship of sorts, a mothering kind, but we also see a side to some of our students, that they would never be comfortable showing their parents. Sometimes that is good, and sometimes bad.  

In order to motivate and inspire, we attempt to earn the trust and respect of our students.  I tell my students about myself. I share stories and relate to them when they need me too.  There are also some things I do not share with my students, as it is necessary to create boundaries with them. And certain things they do not have a need to know.  It is a balancing act of holding them close at arm’s length.  

Creating and maintaining that relationship might be called “thorny.” But, it is well worth it.  There is an Irish form of poetry that goes by the same name, “thorny.” In Irish it is droighneach [dray-nach].  I discovered it recently, and I am not sure how my students would react to this, yet.

The droighneach form is interesting and complicated.  It has 9 to 13 syllable lines, an abab cdcd rhyme scheme, quatrain stanzas, but no fixed amount of stanzas.  There are other rules too! The poem includes a dúnadh, which means it ends as it begins – either the same word or line. You can also incorporate alliteration, cross rhymes, and a trisyllabic line ending.  Or, you know, don’t.  It does make me a laugh a little, for this does sound pretty Irish to me.  In Irish there are no words for yes or no.  You “will” or you “won’t” or you “do” or you “don’t.” And many times it is both.  

“Sure, I will or I won’t. We’ll see.”

Attempting this form is difficult.  It is hard to just sit down and write in one sitting.  I found myself even delaying the start for as long as I could.  It was clunky and not quite right, but I kept at it for a few days and I think I did okay. Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.

                           Listen Mack
Mack, I can not speak my mother tongue,
Tis true that neither does my mother.
It shatters my sense that I belong
And makes me feel like an imposter.

Neither of us was born in our home
Nor did we roam there till much later.
We shared shame, remorse, feeling disowned.
And we keep moving on in search of a creator.

We’re settled now, ever so slightly
Plunging roots like mad not looking back
This hold on the earth I have lightly
Tis true that so does my mother, Mack.

Your Turn!

Lines: Quatrains
Stanzas: Varies
Rhyme: abab cdcd etc.
Rhythm: 9-13 Syllables
Extras: Trisyllabic ending, Cross Rhyme, Alliteration, and/or a Dúnadh.

 

Acrostic Form

There are so many worries that come up when doing a drill at school.  The fire drills we have down.  Everyone leave your stuff; out the door; to the right, out the fire exit door, and down the rickety stairs.  Behind the school, across the yard, and out into the next door field.  Line up. Roll call. Right. Everyone back in through the front door; no shoving; yes, yes, straight back to class, no, not to the bathroom, wait till we are back upstairs and together. Smooth as.  But this year, we tried a few different ones. The first was the scariest.  We had our first Shelter in Place Intruder on Campus drill.

First thing, get all the students out of their desks, back against the far wall – crouching.  Second peek out, if you are able, to see if anyone is trapped in the hall.  Third – make sure the door is locked and secured. Fourth – go to the far wall, and wait with your students.  I turn to them. There they are, knowing it’s a drill, and they are quiet. Eerily quiet. No phones out. Some locking arms.  One of them puts their hand out to me to help me crouch down.  I can see them all.  Our breathing is calm. It is still.

Our “intruder’s” steps are heard approaching the door.  He bangs! Bang! Bang! Bang! The handle jiggles, the door shakes, the pictures on that wall rattle.  He kicks the bottom of the door.  Then all is silent.  His steps move away down the hall.  My students remain quiet, but their eyes have changed; so have mine.  Some have watered. All are wide.  The boy closest to me whispers, “that was really scary, Dr. Flynn.”

“Yes,” I respond, “It was.”

Later my colleague, who played the intruder, will chuckle and say that he wanted us to take it seriously and see how well the students could remain quiet and calm.  Very well it turns out.  But right now, in this moment, I have never felt so protective; so terrified; and so proud.  This is my problem class, the class that can not sit still long enough to hear me finish telling them off.  And here they all sit waiting, together, for the keys to open up our door and give us the all clear.

The second drill occurs a month later – it is a bad weather drill. A tornado watch.  My class, being on the second floor, must leave our stuff, head out our door to the left.  Down the stairs, around the corner to the far back classroom to sit against – as it turns out – a massive glass door leading out into the open area.  We are joined by four other classes in this section down along the corridor.  My students slump against the glass and look at me with shock – “Are they kidding with this? The open area will be the first to go, we’ll get hammered here.”

“Yes,” I respond, “It doesn’t look good, does it?  I will make a note.”

“Perhaps, we could get one of those blast curtains to go up here?” They offer as a possible let’s-not-think-about-what-might-happen-should-a-storm-actually-occur-before-then kind of solution.

“Perhaps.”

The drills are necessary.  And I am glad we have them.  But they really do kick a little when you realize just how helpless we may actually be.  All of these lives here in this one place, all of them looking to you to bring safety and assurance to them.  It’s too much sometimes.  And I think, we need more drills – at lunch; at the end of day; or at the beginning of day when half the staff haven’t arrived yet, but most of the students have.  And these walls are too thin; and the front desk too lax; and and and – I’m not adult enough for this – am I? Is this what being an adult is? Accepting that another human being might walk through these mural-covered halls and start shooting? Accepting that not everyone is going to dodge the flying glass and debris when a tornado rips open our roof? Accepting that sometimes, in schools full of children, no one is really safe?  This is too much.  It is too much.

And all of it – the shooters, and the faulty wiring leading to a fire, and the freak tornado – all of it feels like our fault.  Yet what responsibility do we really take?  When is it enough for us to invest in our schools; in our teachers; in our children? In our futures?  Eegads, I know I sound preachy now, I hear it, I do.  But you haven’t had fourteen fifteen-year-olds look at you with terror in their eyes – looking at you for reassurance that you will protect them even from the fake intruders we organized just for this drill.

Drills are seen as a pain by most.  They interrupt the natural flow of the day; waste time on things we have done a thousand times before; they are repetitive and a little unlikely.  Who knows how it will actually turn out when the bell rings for real? Of course, if you don’t do the drills, then it really is anyone’s guess.  It could have been much smoother if you had just practiced.

This is the same in poetry. Nice segue, no?  There are drills that the writer can practice; in fact, we practice these drills from our earliest days with poetry in the form of acrostics.  One word written vertically on a page.  Each letter of that word begins the line horizontally.  We started out simply with adjectives describing that word, like:

Monumental!
Oh so awesome!
Terrific!
Helpful!
Energetic!
Royal!

Handy in a pinch come Mothering Sunday and you’re a third grader with no allowance. Just saying. Acrostic poems do not have to be one-worded though, a lesson I learned quite recently.  They can expand to imagery and meaning and beauty.  So, let’s give it a go, shall we?

Shelter in Place – Acrostic Form

Down near the ground with my students
Really hearing the reality of the moment
Feeling fearful even in staged events.
Learning not to take for granted the
Youth inside their eyes
Nearing the end of the drill
Noticing just how much they mean.