The Memorised Poem: Monthly u3a Talk with Catherine Robson

Memorising long stretches of verse used to be a fixed part of school life in both
Britain and the United States, but this practice ended long ago. This talk
explains how poetry recitation came to assume such a central place in past
curricular programs and then focuses on when and why the once mandatory
exercised declined. Our speaker will be telling the story of a lost schoolroom
activity and its wide-ranging effects on two sides of the Atlantic. The talk
further explores how recitation altered the lives of ordinary people who
committed poems to heart and changed the worlds in which they lived.

The speaker is a professor at New York University, the author of Heart Beats:
Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem, and co-editor of The Victorian
Age, The Norton Anthology of English Literature.