My poetic memories are very sparse. I can remember in 1965 learning 'Ode to Autumn' (by Keats I think) which started 'Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness....' the rest is lost to the mists of time, but I do remember enjoying the experience of chanting the whole poem with 39 other 14 year olds in our English class with Mrs Hogan - it was quite a group bonding session. We learnt quite a bit of poetry that year, but Ode to Autumn is the only one that is still with me. I went to speech lessons for 12 months to try and make me talk with less strine, and I can remember 'you are old father william, the young man said, and your hair has become very white'....and then 'the highwayman came riding, riding, the highway man came riding'.....just a few snatches lodged into my subconscious.
In year 12 I quite enjoyed TS Eliot and we studied a bit of Chaucer as well. At university it was John Donne and Gerald Hopkins. Nothing much remembered there but for a phrase 'hairy diadem of gold' .... John Donne describing the pubic hair of his mistress. She must have been a blonde. Then a big effort when I was teaching English myself, to make sure that my own students enjoyed poetry - I didn't want to turn them off it, but I probably did as I had little idea how to 'teach poetry'.
My most vibrant poetic memories are with the Aboriginal kids at Epenarra, where I taught the junior class how to read using 'big books' - huge books with great pictures that we could all read at the same time together. The rhythms of the text were wonderful - 'in went the duck, wishy washy wishy washy, in went the pig, wishy washy, wishy washy. Loud, vibrant, confident we yelled our way through a whole series of texts - and took them with us when we went outside. So a visit to the river, and next minute we are enacting Mrs Wishy Washy and the words are pounded out.
So I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn some poems and be able to chant them while I am walking, to keep the mind active, and share them with whoever is on the trail as a bit of entertainment. I did a search on google for 'book of australian poetry', and up came a list with this title appealing to me - 60 Classic Australian Poems. so I have ordered it - 60 different poets - and each poem has a page of notes the author describes why he thinks the poem is a classic and unpacks the poem as well. All that symbolism stuff goes straight over my head if nobody points it out. It includes poets from present day and goes right back - I did notice that Lawson and banjo patterson each have one listed on the table of contents. All the others I had never heard of. So that is my intellectual challenge for the walk.
I just hope this is not a heavy book - they don't have the weight of the book when you are shopping!
If you're not against digital books, I recommend Project Gutenberg. Of course like many people I like the feel of paper books, but I travel a lot and HATE leaving books behind. So I just download the book text file and keep all of them at my fingertips. You can put it on a tiny laptop netbook (7 inches) like my Asus EeePC, or read them on the ubiquitous iPod. All of the classics are on there, Sherlock Holmes, Austen, Twain, Dickens. There is even an Australian Gutenberg with Australian Public Domain books like Gone with the Wind and Anne of Green Gables. Probably poetry too. Also Scribd.com and Wattpad both have books in PDF. I probably have at least 50 books old and new inside one 3 lb netbook. Actually in one tiny SD memory card in the netbook.
ReplyDeleteI know I keep talking about it but I really love Bill Bryson's book on the AT. He also wrote "In a Sunburned Country" about Australia and "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" which you may have read. Don't think they're on Gutenberg though!
Although-- reciting poetry as you walk the trail makes a better story for other people. :)
-Debbie Wwoofa