Download mp3 9.5mb
What does it mean to learn a poem by heart?
A couple of weeks ago Fiona and I led a week long course in France, Connecting with others through words and movement. Inspired by our experience running that course and by reading Kim Rosen's book Saved by a Poem, we've been thinking about different ways of working with poetry, and how you can learn about yourself through working with poetry.
You can find out more about Sage Cohen's book Writing The Life Poetic, which Fiona mentions in the podcast, here.
Fiona also reads Esther Morgan's This Morning. Esther's third collection Grace will be available in October. This Morning won the Bridport prize in 2010.
This Morning
I watched the sun moving round the kitchen,
an early spring sun that strengthened and weakened,
…coming and going like an old mind.
I watched like one bedridden for a long time
on their first journey back into the world
who finds it enough to be going on with:
the way the sunlight brought each possession in turn
to its attention and made of it a small still life:
the iron frying pan gleaming on its hook like an ancient find,
the powdery green cheek of a bruised clementine.
Though more beautiful still was how the light moved on,
letting go each chair and coffee cup without regret
the way my grandmother, in her final year, received me:
neither surprised by my presence, nor distressed by my leaving,
content, though, while I was there.
Esther Morgan
5 comments:
This led me to similar memories of my own grandmother before she died.
Beautifully written. Thanks for sharing it here.
Thank you so much for posting Esther Morgan's poem - it is very vivid, and it is easy to see why it won The Bridport, one of the poetry world's most prestigious honours - I buy the anthology each year because I know I shall find nothing but quality.
The "small Still Life" image at the heart of the poem realises wonderfully well how we observe closely then move on - it crystalises our instants of perception and the link to grandmother is settled perfectly.
I listened to the poem in your voices and then read it again a few times. Each time: goose bumps. Kim Rosen writes about how a poem can physically change your body, and this was a good reminder. Isn't that powerful: my body transformed for a moment by a poem we can all share? Powerful medicine, indeed!
Post a Comment