Every year, near the end of the semester, I ask my students two questions. What was helpful? What do you still remember? I have been asking these questions for over twenty years, across more than seven thousand students, at universities…

Day Ten. The same poet. The city where it all began. Before Everything Else Every other story in this series has been about arriving somewhere. A train station, a bus stop, a tram that carries you through an unfamiliar city…

Day Nine. The same poet. In the city that is his. This One Is Different Every other story in this series has been about finding Shevchenko far from Ukraine. In Kranj and Vienna and Washington and Bratislava and Zagreb and…

Day Eight. The same poet. At the edge of Europe, above the river that flows to the ocean. Lisbon, and the People Who Made It Home I came to Lisbon twice, in the autumn of 2022 and again in the…

A message to my students and social workers everywhere Today is World Social Work Day. I am writing from Kamloops, British Columbia, on the unceded territory of the Secwépemc people, with a full heart and a deep sense of gratitude.…

Day Seven. The same poet. The city that gave him a square. The Long Way to Paris I did not plan Paris. Paris arrived the way certain gifts arrive, sideways, through the logic of a schedule that was already full,…

Day Six. The same poet. The city that printed his words when his empire banned them. The 6 A.M. Train There is a particular discipline to the early morning train. Not the romantic kind of early, not the pre-dawn departure…

Day Five. The same poet. The golden hour found him first. The Night Train from Split There is a particular quality to arriving somewhere by night train that no other form of travel replicates. You board in one world, surrender…

Day Four. The same poet, a different logic of arrival. The Detour That Was Not Optional There is a particular kind of decision that does not feel like a decision at all. It arrives fully formed, already made, and all…

The Weekend That Should Not Have Been Possible In 2007, Air Canada did something it has never done again and probably will never do again for such a low price. For a brief, improbable window, it offered a pass, an…

Day Two. The same poet, a different city, a different kind of finding. The City I Lived In Without Exploring For one month, Vienna was my address. I had an Airbnb there, a base, a place to return to between…

Today is March 9. Shevchenko Day. The birthday of Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko, born in 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, Kyiv region, into serfdom, into an empire that did not believe he had the right to a language, and who…