Thank you, Madam Grace · Unity Grammar School, Lagos

Where & when

• Unity Grammar School · Lagos · Nigeria 1999–2002 English literature class

About them then

Madam Grace · about 38 then

Our English literature teacher: a tall woman with a laugh you could hear down the corridor, who made us read poems aloud under the mango tree whenever the generator failed.

Who I was then

The boy in the second row who always pretended to have lost his textbook.

Why I'm writing

To say thank you · Just hoping my words reach them

I was fourteen and convinced that poetry was for other people. You never argued with me. You just kept handing me a poem a week and waiting. By the end of that year I was reading ahead of the class. I teach literature now, in a small school of my own, and every time a student rolls their eyes at a poem I hear your laugh and keep waiting.

Passed on by 2 · reached step 2 · 0 keeping an eye out

Could this letter be about you? This is me