Why By Heart?

When I was fifteen years old I learnt a poem by heart. This poem, by Philip Larkin:

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.”

I can’t remember precisely why or how I learnt this poem.

I have quite a poor memory, so it would have taken me quite a while to get those 12 lines of verse into my head and heart where they sit today. I guess the reason I learnt it was that its message impressed me at the time, giving me a way of voicing “a truth” I couldn’t voice without the poem.

For the next 25 years, although I read the odd poem here and there, I didn’t feel the need to learn any more.

Then one day, as I was recording a Read Me Something You Love podcast, in which I recited the poem during our discussion, I suddenly realised what having that poem meant to me. I realised how it had sustained me in some essential way.

When we learn poems by heart, we can turn to them in conversations with others, in conversations with ourselves, again and again, speaking through and to the poem. As we age and change, our relationships to our by-heart poems change too. The poem becomes us, we become the poem. This is quite special.

So I started learning more poems by heart. About one a week. And as the poems I knew began to accumulate inside with their words and impressions and feelings, I started to recognise just how incredibly powerful this kind of exploration could be as a self-discovery tool.

Having had 20 years of meditation practice, and a number of years of personal therapy, I also saw how poetry might offer a similar way of bringing one’s chaotic mind into alignment and composure. But the words weren’t just reconfiguring my head, they were also speaking to my heart. Powerful emotions, fascinating ideas, and curious associations poured in with each line learnt. The effect was magical, and when I started encouraging others to do it, they found it magical too.

But like anything, the proof of the poetry is in the eating. So if any of this resonates with you in any way whatsoever, I would urge you to try an inexpensive, 1.5 hour taster-session and see what happen. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, but you might even love it.

Also feel free to contact me if you have any further questions about the By Heart process.