You can't have too many poems about hippos
I'm reading my poem 'Hippopotamus Cambrensis' at Caffi Soar in Merthyr Tydfil tomorrow, 23 April at 2pm. It’s a launch for Arachne Press’s A470 Poems for the Road/Cerddi’r Ffordd. I thought I’d better have an extra hippo poem handy.
Asylum
As hippos go, he is light on his feet, not strictly the tango king, but nimble enough to climb the scree, and shimmy over the compound’s palisade.
Guided by stars and night breezes, he pads through villages and sleepy lanes to the channel shore. In the dark, he searches soft and soundless along the beach.
Soundless on the shingle? No miracle this – our hero’s pace matches the breaking waves.
At the water’s edge he finds discarded zodiacs. He steps in one. It sinks. Another floats, and hippo’s robust farts propel him seaward, into the jeopardy of the shipping lanes.
Ferries and tankers skirt him at first light, till hippo looms at HMS Vainglorious. Oh God, Skip, says the officer of the watch, what’s the protocol for rescuing a hippo?
We look at hippos, and we smile, don’t we? But at sea hippos are, how to say it, tricky?
Somehow to Dover, fodder and the RSPCA, until the world stops to watch, on deck, a pachyderm prime minister applaud the migrant, uniquely eager for Rwanda.
There is something approachable about discussing making online tutoring sessions effective through situations people can actually picture. A clear question before a session can help the learner use the available time well. It makes me curious about the practical side of online tutoring support. I would be interested in a simple example, because it is often the ordinary details that make an idea memorable. How would you check that a tutoring explanation has actually become understandable?
What draws my attention to building management skills through practical situations is the possibility of making an unfamiliar subject feel closer to everyday life. A realistic scenario can expose how different decisions affect a team's work. I would keep that thought nearby when looking for ideas about management skills training. I am more curious about the process than a polished result, because the steps in between are usually where questions appear. Which situations are most useful for practising management before taking responsibility for a team?
A conversation about planning the next step in graduate education seems most useful to me when it leaves space for uncertainty and further questions. A clear research interest can make a programme comparison more meaningful than a list of rankings. It makes me curious about the practical side of graduate study planning. I would probably come back to this question after trying to work through one concrete example rather than deciding immediately. What would help you decide whether a programme fits your learning goals?
There is something approachable about discussing discovering the cultural heritage of Lusatia through situations people can actually picture. Language and local stories can reveal connections that are easy to miss on a map. That is the kind of detail I would keep in mind while exploring Lusatian cultural heritage. A short discussion of an everyday example would make this easier for me to connect with, especially as someone still learning about the subject. How would you introduce regional heritage through a classroom project?
Considering learning local history through school projects, I keep coming back to the difference between knowing about an idea and putting it into practice. Family memories and public records can offer different perspectives on the same place. I would keep that thought nearby when looking for ideas about Przyglow history projects. I am still thinking through the details, and a small example would help me picture how this works in practice. How could students compare these sources while respecting what each can show?