Minying Huang
Over seven years have passed since 2014, when I first came to St John’s College as an undergraduate student reading for a BA in Spanish and Arabic. After graduating in 2018, I left to pursue a yearlong MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto before returning once more to begin my DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages.
I have occupied many bedrooms in this place, moving from quad to quad, from staircase to staircase. I have met many wonderful people, many of whom I hold dear to me to this day, in this place. This place, I hope, has seen me grow and change – oftentimes in rather messy ways – and come into myself; and it will continue to do so, for a little while longer at least.
The College gardens, its crocuses in bloom one February, are where I found myself moved to write a poem that would embolden me to write other poems. I would not have called myself a poet back then, but I feel somewhat more at ease with the word now. Oxford is not necessarily a place I associate with ease, but certainly with personal revelation, and for that I am grateful. In this city I have shed and acquired, and acquired and shed, many labels. I am still learning how I want to relate to all the terms that can be applied to my personhood, and if I can do so on my own terms. Port Meadow, where this photo was taken, is where I sometimes walk to clear my head, away from others’ gazes, their questions, their projections.