Dr. Michael Castro, St. Louis’s first and current poet laureate, has seen the world. India, Scotland, England, Hungary: if it’s on a map, he’s probably been there.

But on Thursday, the poet visited somewhere a little closer to home: Marquette High School.

When the idea of having some local poets visiting students struck Shelly Justin, language arts teacher and poetry club sponsor, she researched with little expectation of what she would come to find.

“I decided to Google the Missouri poet laureate, and I never even got a chance to look at that because all of the sudden I see this St. Louis poet laureate,” Justin said. “I started reading it I realized he was the very first St. Louis poet laureate who was inaugurated last year.”

Justin initially invited Castro’s assistant Pacia Anderson, to a reading with her Poetry Club students. After a visit with her, Justin said she set out and accomplished inviting St. Louis’s first poet laureate in front of students to share his expertise.

“I’m hoping with his help, he will get more students interested in poetry,” Justin said.

The avid poetry reader and language arts teacher said she would love to stop the stigma poetry has in the classroom as a “dry, boring, very strict, rule-filled type of writing.”

The student members of the poetry club were also eager as they discovered they were going to be in the presence of such an icon in the poetry world. Petiri Munyikwa, member of the club, nearly jumped with excitement when speaking about the reading. Even before the date of the visit, she shared the source of her anticipation.

“Just being exposed to greatness, being able to be exposed to that so early on, it’s gonna be able to push me even further as a poet,” Munyikwa said.

The visit included Castro having two presentations 3rd and 5th hour where he shared some of his poetry and discussed his job as a poet laureate, providing insight to aspiring poets and students in attendance.

“I have this saying I use for myself… I’m not sure if it comes from The Analects of Confucius or if I picked it up at a fortune cookie, but it goes, ‘never read your poetry unasked, if asked never refuse’,” Dr. Castro said.

The presentation lasted almost an hour as Dr. Castro shared stories of his life, discussed rare insights into his poems and their meanings and answered questions from students such as how he became so passionate about poetry coming from a prose-based background.

“I realized that poetry is not just about the intellectual meaning of the words,” he said. “It’s in ways like music and ways we experience it beyond words or like visual art and the way we experience that beyond words.”

Dr. Castro also spoke of his experience and honor of becoming the first St. Louis poet laureate.

“Why St. Louis decided at this time in January 2015 to create the poet laureate position, is it says to the world outside that our city, our region is about more than the bad news that you hear in the paper. That we are a city that the arts are important, where culture is important,” Dr. Castro said.

Dr. Castro and the Poetry Club also engaged in a workshop to finish out his visit.