An encounter with literature

At Birkerød Gymnasium, HF, IB & Boarding School, we hold a literary event every year for all Hf and Stx graduating students and the IB students who have Danish A in 3u. We call the event The Literary Gift, and the idea behind it is to give the students the opportunity to meet Danish literature in a slightly different way than they are used to from daily Danish lessons. In the past, we have, among other things, had visits from Caspar Eric, Theis Ørntoft, Charlotte Weitze and Morten Pape. This year, it was poet Haidar Ansari (b. 2001) who stopped by the school and talked about his collection of poems Institutionalised (2022), which deals, among other things, with ways into and out of crime.

In the Danish modules leading up to the event, the students had worked with some of Haidar Ansari's texts. Ansari began by reading from Institutionalized and talking about the creation of the collection of poems, which he began writing while serving a sentence. It was also during his sentence that he became seriously acquainted with Danish literature, and Haidar Ansari could tell about how he spent much of his time in prison reading classic literary works, and how this encounter with fictional worlds and characters gave him an insight that has since enriched his life in many areas.

The students also had the opportunity to ask Haidar Ansari questions at the event, and thus part of it took the form of an exciting conversation – e.g. about having role models, about personal responsibility and about how class differences typically also appear in very small details.

Thanks to Haidar Ansari for a very exciting morning!