This part of the site is for those people who have tried to learn a poem by heart. You might have done this by yourself, or with Steve during one of his By Heart Courses.
Regardless of how you got here, welcome!
On this part of the website, please feel free to write about your experiences of learning a poem by heart, add a Soundcloud file of you reciting your freshly learnt poem aloud, or anything else that feels congruent with the project.
If you would like to write a blog post for this page, please email me and I'll send you some sign-in info for the blog, or if you're familiar with Wordpress, just sign in here, and you'll be automatically added as a contributor.
Here are a few questions I'd love to get some feedback on if you feel like answering them:
- Why did you choose this poem? What is your relationship/history with the poem?
- How did you set about learning the poem by heart?
- Did any lines in the poem "speak to you" in new ways as you learnt the poem? Which lines and how?
- Were there any lines/parts you found particularly challenging to learn? Any idea why?
- Has the process of learning this poem, or of having the poem living inside and with you changed your thinking/behaviour/feeling about the poem/world/anything else?
These are not massively well-thought out questions. Will refine them as I go along. If there are any questions you'd like to ask other By-Hearters, please do drop me a line.
Anthea West (1)
Fern (2)
Gabriella Apicella (3)
Katy Darby (1)
Kevin Porter (12)
Kit Spahr (7)
Megg Hewlett (3)
Joss Rossiter (1)
Steve (1)