Speaking at the Hay Festival, Salman Rushdie lamented the “lost art” of memorising poetry. “I call it learning by heart because it affects the heart.” Indeed. It pulses in your blood and makes the heart sing. It goes deep.
My old English teacher “Min” Hills was very big on it. A sensitive and fabulously miserable man, he urged us to learn loads, mainly wrist-slashing, melancholic stuff like Shakespeare’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech from Macbeth. “It will serve you well in later life,” he quipped lugubriously. We were compelled to recite it – in our shorts.
“It is a tale. Told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.”
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