…by hearting
When I was sixteen years old I learnt a poem by heart. This one by Philip Larkin.
I guess the reason I learnt it (I’m sure I’m not the only crabby teenager who did) was that I felt the poem gave me a way of voicing a “truth” I couldn’t voice by myself alone.
After Larkin, I had the odd stab at memorising other poems. But it wasn’t a priority, so no more verse went into my head (or heart) for a couple of decades.
Until now.
Recently I’ve been learning poems as if my life depended on it (and in some ways I’m starting to think it does).
I go for poems that unsettle me, poems that make me feel something quite intense like a blow to the solar-plexus, or a whomp to the chest from a defibrillator.
Even if I’m not always sure what this feeling is, I’ve realised that if I learn poems “by-heart”, that’s to say with my heart, through my heart, the learning of the poem acts like a kind of “medicine”, giving me something I didn’t even realise I needed, something I probably still lack.
When we beginning learning these heart-poems, we turn to them into “conversations”, both with others and with ourselves; working through whatever it is we need. The poem becomes us, we become the poem. This is an incredibly interesting (and sometimes quite moving) transaction.
Having had 20 years of meditation practice, and a number of years of personal therapy, I also saw how poetry might offer another way of bringing one’s chaotic mind into alignment and composure. Memorising is no doubt a galvanising work-out for brain and heart. Body and mind inseparable.
And it’s fun too! Powerful emotions, fascinating ideas, and curious associations pour in with each line learnt. It’s so much fun that when I started encouraging others to do it, they found they couldn’t stop (in a good way).
But like anything, the proof of the poetry is in the eating. So if any of this resonates, I would urge you to try an inexpensive, 1.5 hour taster-session and see what happens. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Who knows, you might even love it.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions about the By Heart process.
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…Me (Steve Wasserman)
I am a psychotherapist and writer, but I’m also, much of the time, a reader.
My first degree was in literature, and in the two professional MAs that followed (Linguistics and Psychotherapy) I was able to shape my dissertations into explorations of how novels and poems can be taken out of the classroom and into our lives in significant and transformative ways.
As well doing one-to-one psychotherapy, I also teach Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction courses. Although I see how meditation can be an incredibly powerful force in people’s lives (it certainly has been in mine), I have also seen how many of my students find it a tough discipline to follow, and one they often struggle to maintain (as do I).
So how to find a practice that can bring together the pleasures of literature with the transformational, brain-reconfiguring power of mindfulness and heartfelt conversation? The two biggest inspirations for my By Heart Courses have come from my training with The Reader Organisation, and immersing myself in the work of Kim Rosen.
The courses I offer are an amalgamation of everything I’ve learnt in the last two decades teaching and facilitating self-discovery work for my clients and students, but the courses are also about what YOU and the poems we look at bring to the conversation.
Everyone brings something wholly unique and special to this process.
Welcome.