Those of you who have been following my musings for a while may remember that in the second lockdown, Mike, Liz and I all resolved to learn a poem a week. We kept it up for the best part of a year, and I learned some thirty poems off by heart.
Of course, my intention was to keep learning more, and to remember those learned. I did not do either.
I was lamenting that recently to my patient and long-suffering wife, Jane, who suggested that I could re-learn those I had learned, as a start.
When I had calmed down sufficiently (after a few weeks) I realised the wisdom of her suggestion, so I have started to do so.
And here's the interesting bit (I think, at least). Although I thought I had forgotten them all (and even forgotten that I'd ever learned some of them) they are coming back extremely quickly. It used to be a bit of a struggle to learn one a week (and that in lockdown, when time was much less committed than it is now). However, In the last 10 days I have re-learned the first six poems I learned, and found it easy to do so.
So four years on, the residual memory (if that's a suitable term) is actually quite strong, which says something interesting about the endurance of learning even when not used for a while.
And the other thing I am remembering is the great pleasure I take in having poetry available to me in that way, when I am walking the fells, out on my bike, wakeful at night or whenever...
And lest you think this post is not relevant to you, I will end with a Call To Action as all the gurus on Linked In recommend: learn a poem off by heart!
As you may remember, if you are (as you should of course be) a regular reader of my posts, I have been learning a poem a week for the last few months. It has been an interesting and fruitful exercise in many ways: not least remembering how we learn things by heart - and how satisfying that can be.
This week, I learned Rupert Brooke's sonnet: The Soldier. You know, the one that begins:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
It is, of course, very out of fashion these days - we are much more in sympathy with Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon of course, and with good reason. So it is fair to say that I started with a degree of antipathy towards it. But I decided to learn it anyway.
And as so often happens, as I learned it, I grew to like it rather more. It is easy to be critical, and to talk of his naivety and so forth. But there is a genuine poignancy to it; and more than that, there is something important, I think, in being able to enter the imaginative and emotional world of someone who is starting from a very different viewpoint than we do ourselves.
In fact, in terms of valuing difference, or diversity, I think that is an essential skill, and (it occurs to me) not one that all those who champion EDI always demonstrate.
I think it was CS Lewis (someone else rather out of fashion, I think) who wrote in one of his essays that, if forced to choose between reading only old books, or only new ones, he would choose the old. His point was not that the old books were likely to be better than the new; but rather that if they did contain errors or assumptions that were incorrect, those would be far more obvious to a modern reader; whereas the errors and assumptions in new books might be nearly invisible, as we breathe a more similar cultural air to the writers.
And in Brooke's poem, of course, there is a terrible naivety about the horrors of war; and a degree of sentimentality about his love of England. But there is no jingoism. And that made me think about patriotism: something else that is very unfashionable. Of course jingoism and xenophobia are dreadful; but then so is anything at the extreme. And I think some risk going to the opposite extreme at the moment of hating our own country and our heritage, with as blind a prejudice as the xenophobe hates other people's.
Which leads me (as so often) to think how wise Aristotle was in his formulation of the notion of virtue, as a mid-point between excesses. So we should love our family - not because it is better than other families, but because it is ours; and in due moderation; and likewise our home town, our football team, our country, and so on. In each of these there is something loveable, and it is, perhaps, ingratitude to fail to recognise that - and that would take us to one of the extremes Aristotle would counsel against. But always, that love should be tempered by an appropriate humility and criticality, lest we go to the other extreme.
And for all its sentimentality, I am enjoying Brooke's poem more than I thought I should:
I am increasingly interested in the value of working with imagery and metaphor. In a recent supervision, for example, the coach I was supervising (let's say Sam as that was not the coach's name) was thinking about a particular client (whom we can call Alex, on the same basis).
Sam wanted to think about how to support Alex's growth and development, following a very difficult time at work. Rather than get into the complexities of Alex's situation, I asked Sam to hold the questions she had in mind lightly, and think about a metaphor. Sam thought that might be difficult, but in fact one came quite quickly. It was of a chrysalis, with a butterfly struggling to emerge from it. The environment is adding to the difficulty; leaves or twigs or something making it all harder. And it has been pouring with rain, so everything is wet. The sun needs to come out.
We played with this quite a lot and added the wind as another potential help in the environment, as it might dry things more quickly. I invited Sam to consider the wind and the sun as elements over which Alex might have some agency, and that proved a helpful line of thought.
Finally I asked what new story might be coming to mind, and Sam answered: Even aware of the fragility and vulnerability of the butterfly, Alex takes off. Sam said she was finished at this point so we moved on to review the process.
Sam had found it 'really lovely – refreshing.' Sam now had a much clearer sense of how she wanted to work with Alex in their next meeting, and was able to hold that lightly. And Sam was clear that the metaphor, and the way we developed the story together, had brought all the salient elements to the fore, far more quickly than just talking about the situation would have done.
And that strikes me as fairly typical of how metaphors work. Sam's choice of metaphor, and then the consideration of how the environment might help or hinder, and where Alex's agency lay, all cut straight to the heart of her thinking about this relationship.
So now I am wondering how to take that further. I mentioned in a previous post that I am currently learning a poem a week. And poetry, of course, is rich in metaphor. So I am considering how to use more poetry in my work. And in discussing that with my supervisor, she reminded me of the work of David Whyte, a poet who uses poetry in organisational contexts.
So I am not quite sure where this will take me: I am thinking of running a workshop on Poetry and Leadership, starting with some reflections by me on a couple of improbable poems that I think (by analogy) might stir up interesting and valuable insights in leaders (or coaches or leaders), and followed by a small group discussions of the possibilities of this idea. Let me know if you are interested.
This lockdown has been grimmer, in some ways, than previous ones. Maybe it's the winter; maybe it was that we were just getting hopeful again... Whatever the reason, it seemed to hit harder. So my younger children decided that it would be a good idea to learn a poem a week, and to swap poems every Saturday morning via Whatsapp. And they recruited me, too.
So for the past several weeks, I have been learning a poem off by heart every week, and enjoying Mike's and Lizzie's recitations of their poems. And we have covered a lot of ground already: Shakespeare, Hardy, Eliot, Elizabeth Jennings, Stevie Smith, and even Geoffrey Bache-Smith, whom I hadn't come across before.
There are some obvious benefits, of course: exercising the old cerebellum as Bertie would say, and refreshing the soul. And also, for me at least, addressing that feeling that I really ought to know more poetry (by the end of the year, I should know a lot more than I do now!)
But one that I hadn't foreseen was how pleasant it is to have access to all this different verse in my head for those moments - out walking, or waking in the night for example - when one might otherwise drift into unhelpful rumination or worry. I'm not especially prone to these, but as I say, this lockdown has been grimmer...
I'm particularly keen to remember all the poems I learn this year, so I try to say them through to myself most days at some stage: often when returning from a walk on the fells. By the end of the year, of course, I'll have to go for much longer walks, if I am to sustain that habit. And that, too, would be no bad thing...
I wish all my clients, colleagues and friends a very blessed Christmas and a happy and successful New Year. 2014 has been a very good year for us;
I have had lots of interesting work with interesting people, ranging from academics to sailing instructors;
I have made significant progress on the long-promised book, and it is nearly finished;
Annie married and started work, Clare graduated and has exciting travel planned in the New Year, Mike finished school, changed direction and is studying Graphic Design very successfully, and Lizzie continues to excel at school and sports.
I always think Christmas a good time for poetry, so here is a contribution to the festive spirit: Christmas The bells of waiting Advent ring, The Tortoise stove is lit again And lamp-oil light across the night Has caught the streaks of winter rain In many a stained-glass window sheen From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
The holly in the windy hedge And round the Manor House the yew Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge, The altar, font and arch and pew, So that the villagers can say 'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.
Provincial Public Houses blaze, Corporation tramcars clang, On lighted tenements I gaze, Where paper decorations hang, And bunting in the red Town Hall Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.
And London shops on Christmas Eve Are strung with silver bells and flowers As hurrying clerks the City leave To pigeon-haunted classic towers, And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky.
And girls in slacks remember Dad, And oafish louts remember Mum, And sleepless children's hearts are glad. And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!' Even to shining ones who dwell Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window's hue, A Baby in an ox's stall ? The Maker of the stars and sea Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is, No loving fingers tying strings Around those tissued fripperies, The sweet and silly Christmas things, Bath salts and inexpensive scent And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells, No carolling in frosty air, Nor all the steeple-shaking bells Can with this single Truth compare - That God was man in Palestine And lives today in Bread and Wine.
I provoke smart people who are tackling difficult problems to think better. That includes coaching, supervising coaches, facilitating team events, running leadership programmes and skill training workshops, and walking in the Lakes...
