'Moving' experience: Poet laureate inspires Worcester students

WORCESTER — It was an unforgettable experience for Solei Banks.

Banks put her hand over her heart when she said listening to the poetry of Juan Matos was “moving.”

Banks was one of dozens of students at Burncoat Middle School who piled into the school’s auditorium Wednesday afternoon to experience Matos’s passion for poetry.

They heard several of his original poems, his inflection rising and falling for emphasis.

One of his works glorified Worcester, where Matos taught for decades in the city’s public schools.

Another called Worcester health care workers "heroes" for serving on the front lines of life and death during the coronavirus pandemic.

And another was a tribute to Gertrude Halstead, a Holocaust survivor who was appointed Worcester's poet laureate for life in 2007.

Halstead died in 2012, and seven years later, Matos was selected the city’s next poet laureate, to serve a three-year term that started in January 2020.

Making up for lost time

That term expires at the end of this year and Matos is determined to make up for lost time.

He opened his appointment book to show that his calendar was full of bookings. A far cry compared to the last two-plus years of the coronavirus pandemic, when in-person poetry readings were impossible to schedule because of public health concerns.

Matos is determined to serve out the rest of his term by meeting with as many people as possible to share his love of poetry and how it can inspire their lives.

He wants the majority of that time spent with young people.

It makes sense because Matos spent 36 years as a teacher, a big chunk of that time teaching Spanish Literature and English as a Second Language (ESL) to Worcester students.

What is poetry?

Poetry has been a part of Matos’s life since he was in the second grade, a fact he shared with students. Then he posed a question to them — “What is poetry?”

After a moment of silence, Matos answered his own question and it may surprise some — “Who knows,” he said, because poetry isn’t a stiff linear formula. It’s based on feelings.

"It's not a rose, but the smell of a rose. It's not the sea, but the sound of the sea," Matos told the students. “It’s an expression of feelings and experiences that come from the heart.”

Lots of heart

There’s a lot of heart in Matos’s personal journey, some he shared with the students.

He arrived in the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in 1985, spent four years and eight months as an undocumented immigrant before gaining permanent residence status. He learned English in college and embarked on a decades-long teaching career before retirement.

Today, Matos is 68 years old, and his story — and his poetry that is chock full of feelings — resonated with Burncoat students, many in the audience in the school's dual-language program.

“I relate to Juan (Matos),” said Jose Hernandez, 13, who was only 5 years old when his family arrived in the U.S. from Cuba.

Rachel Jackson, 12, told the story of her mom, who grew up poor in Puerto Rico, where access to an education was difficult. Like Matos, Jackson’s mother persevered. She earned a college degree in the U.S., and currently has a career working with disabled children.

Banks, the 13-year-old student who found Matos’s poems “moving,” isn’t a poetry novice. Her father is an English teacher at Worcester Technical High School, writes poetry and often reads it to his children.

"I like reading poetry, with its different styles," said Banks.

Diego Alonso Segura, 14, was born in the U.S, and revealed that some of his family members from El Salvador arrived in this country as illegal immigrants.

Like Matos, Segura didn’t grow up learning English, and said Matos’s poems, “make you visualize the colorful images and places in Worcester.”

Students also heard Adael Mejia's poem, "Young." Mejia is Worcester's youth poet laureate, and his reading delved into making sense of the challenges in one's formative years.

"Letting go of being a young victim, and turning into a man," is how Mejia explained his poem.

Next gig

Those colorful images and places mentioned by Segura are the focus of Matos’s next gig after he concludes his run as poet laureate.

He said he received a grant from the Worcester Arts Council, and plans to use the funds to connect the city’s youth — through poetry — to the murals that dot the sides of many city buildings.

“I want students to react in writing to the art. What does the mural tell you?” he said.

Matos envisions the effort including poetry sessions at the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester, Plumley Village and the Great Brook Valley Learning Center, culminating in a poetry anthology presented by the students in public venues including the Worcester Public Library.

“Expressing the beauty of life, that is poetry,” Matos told the students.

Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @henrytelegram

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester poet laureate: feelings is the basis of poetry.