The Guardian – Homa Khaleeli
“What can you recite by heart? Your times tables? German verb formations? The Lord’s Prayer? Salman Rushdie thinks it should be poetry. Speaking at the Hay Festival, the novelist described memorising poems as a “lost art” that “enriches your relationship with language”. But doesn’t learning poetry by rote make children learn the words but lose the meaning? Not necessarily, according to David Whitley, a senior lecturer at Cambridge University currently researching poetry and memory. He says that, while some people remember with horror having to recite poems in front of an audience, for many, learning poetry by heart can be “life-enhancing”. Whitely, whose Poetry and Memory project surveyed almost 500 people, says: “Those who memorised poems had a more personal relationship [with the poem] – they loved it for the sound and meaning, but it also connected with their life currents – people they loved, or a time that was important to them.”(more)