This past week in my Link2Practice we had a wonderful guest speaker who happens to be both a professional TOC and a poet. Her name is Marie Metaphor (could this actually be her name? I mean, last name “Metaphor” and she just happens to be a poet?!) and she’s Victoria’s Poet Laureate. She performed one of her beautiful, layered, delicate poems to us and I was reminded that poetry is as much about printed letters as it is about voice, rendition, body language. A poem isn’t a poem until it is experienced in, through and by a body. We’ve all probably read a poem, then heard that same poem being recited and felt the difference echo in our bodies. Much like a play (which we can also interact with as merely written text), a poem doesn’t fully come to life until it is performed.

Here is a good example: Michael Sheen reciting “Do not go gentle into that good night”, by Dylan Thomas

Also, “Ode to a nightingale” by John Keats in the velvety, deep, entrancing voice of Benedict Cumberbatch (can you tell I like him?):

How about the excepcional Amanda Gorman reciting her poem, “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021?

I could spend the rest of my evening listening to and selecting poems to include here, but I will leave it at that for today. But I will end in a question: have you ever felt moved in any way by a poem (or a line in a book, a movie, etc.)? If so, do you remember what it was?