on memorizing poetry

I went to a Coffee Talk last week that has me thinking about memorizing poetry. The focus of the talk was a reflection on Harold Coward's lecture from the previous evening. I hadn't be able to attend his lecture, but I really wish I had.

In the talk, he spoke a bit about learning orally/aurally--how vital memorization is to fully understanding a text. There was discussion on how in many religious practices, the sacred text is memorized and this knowledge is passed down from teacher to student. Christianity used to have a much stronger oral tradition that seems to have disappeared in the mid 19th Century (reasons to me were not clear).

Harold spoke of how important it is for young children to memorize things (texts, facts, etc) as these are the foundations of their future knowledge.

Of course, this got me thinking of my own children. My eldest is a whiz at memorizing and has always done it for fun. He used to (may still) have all the countries in the world memorized. He reads a book more than once and has it mostly memorized.

My youngest is two and she's loved Julie Morstad's illustrated book of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Swing ever since she was given it--over half her life, now! The boys and I quickly memorized the poem to recite to her. After Howard's talk, I realized that other than sections of my own poems and Leonard Cohen's "Marita", it's the only poem I have memorized.

This needs to change.

I went to FB and asked what poems and why people have memorized. Over twenty people responded and almost all of them named poems--there was Shakespeare, Millay, Frost, Hardy, and many others, with very few repetitions. And what heartened me the most was that not everyone who responded were writers. That shouldn't surprise me, but it did, in the best possible way.

I once went to a reading where a poet put her book aside and recited a poem of her own. It was a true recitation and the delivery sounded like a child reciting "In Flanders Fields." This put me off wanting to memorize my own work, though through osmosis I have done so. I doubt I'll ever recite a poem completely from memory at a reading in fear of it becoming a parlour trick or transporting everyone back to grade three, but when I do read certain poems, they are mostly from memory.

There are a few poems I love and I'm going to attempt to memorize them, just for the joy of it.

(And then, of course, I remembered this video. Oh, Lynda Barry, you are brilliant.)

weekend of wonders

Last weekend was an amazing, dream-fulfilling type of weekend.

On Saturday, I was lucky to be one of sixteen chosen to attend an all-day master class with Lynda Barry, hosted by the Vancouver International Writers Festival. We were given strict instructions to not socialize until after the workshop was over, but I did have lunch with my husband and John Vigna who was my desk mate. We mostly followed the rules by not talking about the content of the workshop, but did talk about it briefly to agree that it was fantastic.

I have never taken a class like Lynda Barry's, though any of you familiar with her work is probably not at all surprised by this statement. I was completely impressed by her and how she conducted and organized the class. I feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to learn from her. I was given tools that I hadn't considered before, and even better, that I know I will use. If you ever have a chance to take a workshop with her, move mountains to make it happen. I'm so thankful that I had.

And to top it off, she gave me a hug at the end. I'm a lucky, lucky lady.

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On Sunday, my dearest friend, Jennica treated (TREATED!) me to the Madonna concert. We went with Nancy Lee and her husband John Vigna. I rarely go to concerts and I have never been to something like that. It was a visual assault and simply amazing. Sure, I don't really know her new stuff, but man alive, Madonna can put on a show. And she made sure that some of her oldies-but-goodies were represented. My two favourite Madonna songs were done (Express Yourself and Like a Prayer, in case you were wondering) and they were phenomenal. It was spectacle and theatre and left me giddy for a long time.

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On Monday, it was my birthday. It was strange to be away from my husband and my boys, but I got the best gift. The universe gave me the first day of rehearsals of my first professional theatre production. Yes, dear reader, Initiation Trilogy is in rehearsals and I was fortunate to be in the room for the first three days of rehearsals. I would have liked to have been there longer, but I had to get back to my family as Kevin had to leave town.

There is so much I want to write about the process of bringing Initiation Trilogy to life and I know I won't have the time or space to do it in, but will try to in subsequent posts. Right now I will simply say that the first day was magic and that I am so incredibly lucky to have the creative team on this piece.

garden of your mind

I loved Mr. Rogers when I was a kid. Deeply loved him, like he was a family member. I had a recurring dream that lasted from when I was very young well into adulthood (though I think I may have left it behind in my twenties, which is a shame) that involved me crawling through the trolley tunnel into the Neighbourhood of Make Believe. That was the frame of the dream and while the frame was always the same, the dream itself would change--sometimes it would be scary (a few times I was trapped in Lady Elaine's Museum--terrifying!), sometimes it would be fun. For over two decades I had this dream. I miss it.

When Fred Rogers died, I cried. I don't cry when celebrities die and I usually don't get sad, but when Mr. Rogers died I bawled. Even writing this is bringing tears to my eyes. He was more than a famous person, someone who I thought I knew but didn't because of his celebrity. I loved him and I believed he loved me.

So the other night, when I was nursing my youngest before bed, I stumbled upon the video below on Lynda Barry's tumblr site. I watched it three times in a row and couldn't wait to show it to my boys. Should I admit that I still miss Mr. Rogers? I guess I just did.

What She Said: Lynda Barry

"The same thing with writing or anything that we call the arts: there's this idea that they're just an elective, they're just decoration and they have nothing to do with our survival...or why we're here....That's the reason why I made it to 53 is because of finding these things that poetry or paintings or plays contain, that's the stuff of mental health. And we ignore it at our peril."

Lynda Barry in an interview at The Poetry Foundation that's been making the rounds on social media sites this past week. I can't stop watching it.