IT’S the first Tuesday evening of the Spring Term 1973 and English literature lecturer, Bill Dubberly, enters the room.

We are 15 adult students, studying English literature for O-Level, at Barnsley Tech, wondering what sort of replacement teacher we’re getting. Our previous lecturer has obtained a teaching post elsewhere and so we’re changing horses in mid-stream.

Everyone’s attention is fully focussed on Mr Dubberly. I’m sitting at the back of the lecture room and Bill is standing at the side with a low working-top behind him. Two of the three books we’re studying are stacked neatly, but ‘This Day and Age’, is being held nervously in Bill’s unsteady hands.

He’s tall, heavy-set and graceful, with ginger hair that’s starting to recede.

But I already notice that there’s something special about him.

He clears his throat. “Oh I don’t enjoy introductions,” he says, starting to blush and perspire. “I’m Bill Dubberly (he clears his throat again) and I was asked today to take over from Jackie Moore until the end of this academic year.”

We all immediately empathise. The three books are in pristine condition and have clearly never been opened. The one Bill’s holding is an anthology of 20th century verse.

I’m pretty good on accents and I can tell for sure that Bill Dubberly is no Tyke, but identifying his origins is difficult.

However, there’s definitely something magical about the way he speaks.

He doesn’t sound like Sir Laurence Olivier but, like the Shakespearian actor, his bass tones seem to touch my very soul.

He announces: “I’m going to begin by covering some of the poems in this anthology, because I’m told, Mr Moore has only, hitherto, focussed on the novel and the play.”

Oh dear. I can’t fathom poetry to save my life, and, even if it’s not particularly obscure, few poems ‘grab me’, deep down inside, like music.

“I’ve picked up this book of verse many times during the last few weeks and thrown it down in frustration.”

Bill opens his copy with great care and respect.

You can tell he values it. He’s not the type to dog-ear the corner of a page. He then reads aloud the poem, ‘Lollocks’, by Robert Graves.

“By sloth on sorrow fathered/ These dusty-featured Lollocks/

Have their nativity in all disordered/ Backs of cupboard drawers.”

Bill explains that ‘nativity’ means ‘birth’ and that those rascal ‘lollocks’ that make our lives so frustrating by hiding things in the backs of drawers, are the offspring of all lazy habits.

And as he finishes, I’m in a state of shock. Bill has somehow turned the words on the page into a kind-of symphony that vibrates to my core. So that’s what poetry’s all about! It’s not pretentious, at all. It’s wonderful, and magical. It’s as though, up to this moment, poetry has been broadcast on the wrong wavelength but now that problem has been rectified.

He then reads, ‘All Day It Has Rained’ by Alun Lewis and Louis MacNeice’s ‘Prayer Before Birth’. And suddenly, like someone who’s just gone through a religious experience, I’m a convert and self-appointed evangelist of poetry.

Moreover, I realise that I’ve heard the first stanza only once, but I know it will stay locked in my memory bank for the rest of my life.

Bill then relates a personal anecdote about a secondary school head teacher he knew, who explained to his students that using big words impresses listeners and helps a person succeed in life.

Bill shakes his head in disgust, and rolls his eyes as if to say: what an idiot that head teacher was!

“Using big words to show off is not what language is about,” he says, and tuts: “Language is NOT about behaving pompously, or getting one up in the rat-race. It’s about employing words that express precisely what you wish to convey.

“Always heed the immortal words of George Orwell when he said: ‘Never use a long word when a short one will do’.”

This is yet another light-bulb moment for me, and almost everything Bill Dubberley says, during that cold Spring Term of 2003, is etched on my brain forever.

And today, as I consider the charismatic qualities of Bill Dubberly, the names of other gifted teachers pop into my head: Betty Monkman, Harold Rushforth, Brian Glover, Barry Hines, Horace Jarvis, Maurice Firth, Bob Parker, Norman Rimmington, and quite a few others...

What a lucky learner I was!