One of the very first Substack posts I wrote referred to the experience of memorising favourite pieces of text – poems, prose, scripts.
I remember that I started Substack during the lockdown years. I live in Melbourne, which, as it turned out, was one of the most locked down cities in the world during 2020-2021. During our ‘hard’ lockdowns we were allowed out of our homes for one hour’s worth of exercise a day, to be taken within a 5km radius from our homes. I would spend this hour walking beside nearby Merri Creek and feeling very lucky to be able to access such a lovely space.
As I would walk, I often recited snatches of poetry to myself inside my head, playing the words over and over, holding the lines up to my inner light and turning them this way and that, marvelling at the way imagery, rhythm, length of lines, choice of wording would interplay with each other to compress meaning into a few short syllables.
I often turned to Gerard Manly Hopkins, silently reciting within the privacy of my own head:
“My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.”
Merri Creek has an abundance of birdlife, including white sulphur crested cockatoos and black swans as well as the less spectacular but – to me - equally beloved ducks and pigeons.
Hopkins loved nature and many of his poems featured birds:
“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name…”
Despite not being religious, the final lines of God’s Grandeur often move me to tears:
“And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
And then there’s my favourite, The Windhover:
“I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air…”
I would mentally recite other favourite poems as well, but I think that Hopkins got a mental working over during those early morning walks because his poetry is compellingly beautiful but also very complex both in meaning and technique. It’s the sort of poetry that stuns you with its imagery on a first reading, but which only yields up deeper resonances when you take the time to contemplate it. It’s poetry that suits reflection, and especially that sort of reflection that sits well with the rhythms of walking.
Around the same time as these lockdown walks, I read the advice of a writing teacher who asked his students to memorise text, arguing that it would deepen their connection to and appreciation of that text. It was this advice that formed the basis of a creative prompt in one of my early Substack posts:
“But the very real final pleasure (of poetry) is what I called ‘the pleasure of companionship’ – and this was a way of talking about memorization. When you internalise a poem, it becomes something inside of you. You’re able to walk around with it. It becomes a companion.” – Billy Collins
Creative Prompt:
I’m dusting that advice off again: memorise something. Recite it to yourself. In the intimacy of your own head, see what you notice about that text. Feel its power.
If you need any further inducement to do this, watch this clip of Dame Judi Dench reciting one of Shakespeare’s sonnets off the cuff.
Upcoming event:
I have self-published an e-book – Near and Far - which is actually a collection of excerpts from interviews I did with experts about how artists and creatives impact collaborations.
To celebrate, I am presenting a free session where I share some of the themes of the book and I’d love it if you could join me:
Transversal artistry. How do the arts and creativity affect interdisciplinary collaborations? Join me for a 1-hour discussion. 8am OR 6pm 28 Feb. 2024 AEDT. Free. Online. Book here.