The Power of Poetry, with Helena Bonham Carter and Jason Isaacs

ladies and gentlemen good evening and I hope that even if you don't recognize the face you do know the voice now given that I'm normally breathing doom and gloom in your ear at some ungodly hour of the morning it is an absolute delight to be here it is and and perhaps it speaks to what this whole evening is about which is finding an antidote to some of the stresses and strains of life or indeed some of the stuff you hear me saying early in the morning we've got a lot of poems that would all love to hear so I'm going to crack on with first of all the obvious introductions now Hannah mentioned William C Card who in a way who is the inspiration for this evening with his book the poetry pharmacy I mean he said he's a publisher established for word prizes for poetry national poetry chairman of Somerset House trust the list goes on and given everybody on the stage I'm not going to do this really briefly because you will frankly none of them need any introduction I suspect so William obviously the inspiration for this and also Jeanette Winterson who as you well know the what her first novel oranges are the only are not the only fruit which propelled her to superstardom and the bestseller ranks which is where she's been pretty much ever since and William and Jeanette are going to be talking to us about some of the poems we're going to hear tonight and the context for them and then boy do we have a cost lift for reading our poems tonight I mean if you want to hear a poem read who better than one of the four faces and voices to my right Jason Isaacs I mean look all of everyone on this stage has won multiple awards I'm not even going to go through it there but you know obviously obviously lucius malfoy among other things I'm sorry but that is how you are known in our household but so many other films the list you know you've seen you can't turn on your screen big or small or indeed on stage without seeing Jason and of course Helena bonham-carter indeed yes of course you are you are I'm sister-in-law and again I can't believe it I'm course I'd the backstory to this but never one I know but I was to actually I was told not to bring it up because you probably object to being at having all the like all the focus on one film where you're going around screaming we're gonna get off Harry Potter on Helen is left while I dig myself out I know you suja said she was the inspiration for da be a comedian extraordinaire presenter writer Mel ensue and of course from the Great British Bake Off and I'm sure we all not anymore yeah we miss you we miss you and Tom Burke Tom who Dolokhov and Warren piece d'Artagnan oh I forgot that might I've got the rock I'm doing well I think we should get on to the bones currently no on telly playing the lead role in another JK rowling we can't get away from her the strike series for the BBC now listen we've got these fabulous voices were going to hear from shortly but let's kick things off too we're talking about poems themselves generally because obviously William they are such an important part of your life but can you was there a moment was there a lightbulb moment for you when you thought whoa this is what a poem can do there are a number of lightbulb moments I think the one that stuck most in my mind was in my mid-20s I was trying to cross the Cromwell Road and the lights changed to red and the man standing next to me walked into the road and one of the cars jump the lights and the next thing I knew there was a horrible noise and he flew through the air and hit the pavement and in the flurry of the crowd around him was somebody he knew about first aid and was starting to give him the breath of life and he asked my help and in what seemed milliseconds there were police there was an ambulance this man's heart had stopped and he came back to life and then everyone had gone I had given my statement I was standing in exactly the same spot but I had blood on my hands and I had learnt a poem by Philip Larkin called ambulances which is all about when the ambulance comes past you in the street where you live and what it means and what it makes you think poor soul you whisper at your own distress and that poem helped me make sense of what at the time was an incredibly traumatic moment I think a gin and tonic helped to but the combination just reminded me once again of how an important a companion lines of poetry and poems have been for me to help me out cope with the difficulties of my life okay Jeanette Winterson was there a poem for you that did it yes while I was growing up in Akron with my adopted family the winter sense oh it was pretty full we weren't allowed books and because my mother didn't want me to have secular influences but she liked murder mysteries so she used to send me down to excuse me the Public Library um one day she asked me to get a book called murder in the cathedral because she thought it was about a monk homicidal monks and she liked anything that was bad for the Pope anyway when I got it out I could see at once that it wasn't a murder mystery because it was too thin and it said TS Eliot I didn't know he was only 16 I thought maybe he was something to do with George Eliot because I didn't know anything about anyway I opened it and I started to cry and the librarian shouted at me because in those days you weren't allowed to even sneeze in a library let alone cry so went outside sat on the steps of the Accrington Public Library and what I'd read was this the line I opened it out was this is one moment no that another will pierce you with a sudden painful joy this is one moment know that another will pierce you with a sudden painful joy and I realized that I'd found a new friend called TS Eliot and William this idea of the poetry pharmacy in a way I mean you've both just illustrated it it's something that you can turn to where and in this case I mean you stumbled across it almost by accident didn't you completely I was I had during the Olympics I had made an anthology of inspiring poems with paper and paper and as any writers here will know once you've got a book you're on the road to promote it and I went to a series of literary festivals and a wonderful friend of mine called Jenny Dyson said you're always sending your friends poems to cheer them up I'm setting you up at the port Elliott literary fest with in Cornwall and on after you've given your talk I'm putting you in a tent with two armchairs and a prescription pad that I've designed and you're going to listen to people's problems and you can prescribe them a poem oh and I thought this would be a kind of gimmick really and I did I was going to do 10 minutes with each person and they put a black board outside the tent and you could book your slot and six hours later with a very full bladder I was still there I've spent my adult life trying to get poetry out of poetry corner and to some extent I feel maybe I've made the corner a tiny bit bigger but I realized this this changed everything this this suddenly connected people to poetry in a way in which poetry had often intimidated them and frightened by I think everybody has a need and all kinds of people love the idea of a poem for when they're really in trouble they just don't know where to look okay but just before we get good on the robes it does so put you in the rather sick and gloomy corner doesn't it because if it is a medicine then it's medicine you're not we're all sick we are all sick no one goes to the doctor unless they feel ill we you know we now live in a world where we're able freely to discuss mental illness our psyches our neuroses are difficulties in a way in which we've never been able to before and thank God for that it's foolish for anyone to feel that they can just simply cope with all the difficulties of life without engaging and expressing to other people in the old days you'd have a family member a companion a priest a doctor or someone to talk to increasingly we don't go in those routes and the great thing about a poem if you find the right poem for the right state of mind you have a sense instantly of complicity a sense of somebody else feels like I feel and they may have felt that hundreds of years ago when they wrote it and they're reaching out a hand to you and that's what it's all about you feel understood and because you feel understood it helps you evolve and move on it's better than a drink or a pill okay kick us off with our first poem in the first poem I've chosen is the Peace of wild things by Wendell Berry Wendell Berry is an American poet this is a wonderful poem which I prescribed for anxiety and sleeplessness nobody ever tells you when you become a parent that you're condemned to worry for the rest of your life I think they did tell you you might think differently about it but we all know how it feels and the worst time is somewhere around 4:00 in the morning liver time I think it's called we're all in the darkness all of those worries and concerns just seemed to magnify and get worse and worse and worse and there's something about this wonderful poem which even though I live in the middle of a city and I'm not able to do what Wendell Berry does I just sort of mouthed the words to myself and it helps me get back to my sleeping pattern so Jason the piece of wild things by Wendell Berry when despair for the world grows in me and I awake in the night of the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be I go and lie down where the wood Drake rests in his Beauty on the water and the great Heron feeds I come into the Peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief I come into the presence of Stillwater and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light for a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free Genet what's your first perm with you I rather love this it's it's Celia Celia by Adrienne Mitchell and I've chosen it because it's very short and you can learn poems easily but if you're just starting out learning then perhaps learn something which doesn't take a lot of concentration I mean all our actors here know how to learn huge amounts of lines easily but once you've got something inside of you it really belongs to you and I understood this early on in life because back to their old Winterson madness she once burned all of my books which was a terrible thing and then I realized that anything that's outside of you can always be destroyed taken away at any moment and in a world where so many people know refugees we know what that might feel like and it might happen to us so if you had nothing if you had to leave if you had to take things away what would you have inside you that you could rely on and that you could depend on and would you be able to recite things to yourself and others in in that stressful time and this is this is a lovely wonderful poem about the glory of beauty and the joy of the body and sex and just the simple animal elemental everyday pleasures that make you feel better about being a carbon-based human in a silicon world and Alayna you're going to read it to miss happy go on so I guess I'm internet by heart maybe twice I read it by heart see here see you Celia Celia by Adrienne Mitchell when I am sad and weary when I think all hope has gone when I walk along high Hoban I think of you with nothing on [Music] you won't do it again yeah do it again quicker what but anyway watching Houston read where I'm sad and weary when I think I'll hope us we could rap to it when I'm sad and weary when I think all hope is gone when I walk along high hope and I think I think if you and laughing on well I tell you what it shows it shows a poem can be met read in many ways so you're all gonna learn that okay when you go home tonight you've got two poems to learn tonight and that's one of them oh yeah listen we wait till you see what's coming you're gonna have pages and pages of terms to learn okay let's let's go on to our next one which again to a GeoNet is from one that I think y'all introduced for us yes and who's gonna read this in a moment and it's it's a perfect poem really to stop beating yourself up in the crazy West where we always think we have to be doing something in order to improve ourselves you know whatever it is the latest self-help book um read it in life will change well it won't and this poem is actually well they won't will it um I hope nobody in the audience has actually written a self-help book this is really about removing obstacles rather than doing anything it's about being not doing so go on do it be it I'm gonna be it right now [Music] yes this is attributed to Rumi other translators unknown and it's called your task your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it no it's very brief yeah it is but it's the sort of thing that you can carry with you like a talisman isn't it you know some people carry around a rabbit's foot you know or the Lucky Penny yeah he's around a rabbit's foot there's also a lot more a more simple analysis of it in a way which is Lots people come talk to me about love and how often they find themselves pursuing people who aren't interested in them but how so often they turn away the people who are and I think it's something we all recognize do we not that at times in life actually the right partner the right person for relationship might be standing right next to you and you're busy looking at the one I got them going yeah do you think we should have a shake hands with the person next to matter William the next burn um a couple of months ago I was asked to do a pharmacy and a talk to open a new office building in London oh one of those who co-working sites and I spent the afternoon about three hours listening to people's problems and halfway through the security guard came in and he said your 3:30 hasn't turned up can I take their place and I said of course come and sit down what's on your mind and he said to me I came out when I was 24 but I'm 32 and I still haven't had a relationship and I said that's very sad what why do you think that is he said I don't know i'm i'm loving and I'm kind and I'm upbeat and I'm positive but I'm Muslim and I'm gay and I can't be both and I said you have to listen to this poem this has written 700 years ago by one of the greatest Muslim poets of all time and it's all about how men can love each other as well as women and I read it to him and he burst into tears and I think it was probably the most powerful prescription or pharmacy I've ever been involved in and I think it's time for you to all hear it Tom it happens all the time in heaven by her Fez translated by Daniel Lydon Ski it happens all the time in heaven and someday it will begin to happen again on earth that men and women who are married and men and men who are lovers and women and women who give each other light often will get down on their knees and while so tenderly holding their lovers hand with tears in eyes will sincerely speak saying my dear how can I be more loving to you how can I be more kind [Applause] William just listening to you tell that story about that perm in the effect it had on someone maybe or it's almost a confess Oriole role that jorian isn't it when you're sitting there maybe I feel as though I'm I'm a cipher or I'm holding hands between that person and that poem I mean it's it's an incredibly powerful and wonderful feeling to be able to simply just connect people to the right poem for their needs and that's all you really have to do and as I said I think we live in a world where we want to talk to people but we're a bit confused because social media gives us the illusion that were talking to people all the time and we're not really and I think that's makes us even lonelier doing my pharmacy around the country the most common ailment is loneliness and this is really exacerbated by this strange avatar world we live in where people put up not themselves on social media they don't sound miserable I'm lonely or any of these things their lives are filled with friends and mics and so on and it makes everybody else feel increasingly inadequate jeanette is William something do you think poetry and when you do your poetry pharmacy's around the country do you think poetry can work for people who think they're not interested in poetry or poetry's not for them when somebody might just say oh look there's a tent I'll have a goal definitely cuz I think the P word gets in the way I'm sure we most of us feel the same thing which is as we grow up a slight sense that we've been failed by the intermediaries in poetry the English teachers the librarians the booksellers somewhere around eleven twelve or whatever a lot of people lose their confidence in being able to read a poem or feeling that poetry is for them but in the end poetry is is just words trying to connect to you in the same way that prayer can be or liturgy can be and so forth so yes I think it's accessible to anyone but what's required in a way is a little bit of hand-holding and most important of all calm isn't there also something else which is sometimes almost a rereading of a poem it's the you know we want poems to be read slowly because we want them to sink in yes it's the layers of meaning and sometimes you don't get them on a first oh definitely you don't and that's why we say to people read a poem like a prayer don't read it like fiction or journalism read it out aloud in your head or out aloud if if you're able to you're not on the bus but but but read it out aloud in your head and read it five nights running you know keep it by your bed you'll get something completely different from it every time and and as the layers as it unless you'll pick up and all the cadences and the lyricism and the musicality and it will enrich you people have lost the ability to concentrate to listen well which certainly was certainly affected by all of this and in that sense one of the reasons why poetry really helps in the modern world is on the whole it's quite concise so yes I do think our concentration spans are dramatically affected I don't know about you but I'm often sitting reading a novel and after you know half an hour or whatever I find my hand reaching for that damn device and then thinking why am i doing that everything about nothing's changed nothing's happened I think we have a response which we're not necessarily very good at engaging or being present have you ever had somebody who's come into your pharmacy and and patiently not listen to you reading them the poems and not really taken on board always angry indeed no because they're rather rather I was saying about oh you don't you don't go to the doctor unless you're ill on the whole or less you think there's you need to everybody pretty much everyone's come to see me because they want to talk about something and usually the people who begin with I'm fine are the people of first reaching for the Kleenex if I say I'd say half the people I talk to reach for the Kleenex in that way it did speak to me sometimes you go and you'll get when you go to the pharmacy you might get given a medicine new thing that rubbished and make any difference yeah well if I got it wrong yes how much I wonder how much of it is talking to you that's what in a way I'm the same thought about it that's true get unburdening yourself is is half the battle but there is that look of complicity on people's faces when you've read a poem and you see that they've taken it in and that's the real power do you read it to them yes I do then I give them a printed copy to take away and I had this lovely moment I got an email from somebody from Liverpool actually from I'd be not doing a pharmacy with one of the mental health units in Liverpool and I she was suffering from loneliness and I had given her four lines by her fares which are I wish I could show you when you're lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being four simple words for the simple lines and I gave her a printout and I said stick it on your mirror learn it off by heart and read it every morning to yourself and she sent me an email and she said you won't remember me but you know you saw me in Liverpool those months ago and last night I got home to my flat and it had been burgled and in that awful way that burglars do my everything was everywhere and the only thing that hadn't moved she said with those four lines of poetry sticking on my mirror thank you she said it got me through the night yes the next person oh it's Attalus isn't it I'm going to get sue to talk about this because I know she loves it and I do too and because I have an atlas complex I'm a Virgo and so it so is sue so we've probably all the thing that we have to hold up the entire world all of the time but we'll even has a beautiful introduction to this poem in in the book which I hope you'll get offers because it really is a splendid book when he talks about just the living in the day-to-day of love and what love needs in order to get through every day and those acts of kindness which are often really mundane and prosaic not glamorous or operatic at all and this poem is really about that and I was thinking about it actually I tuned and I was taking around some wood to my ex-wife in the No and thinking you actually never lose the people that you love even if you're not with them anymore and you have to do things like take them a bag of wood when it's snowing it's true because so much poetry is written about the first flush of love isn't it yeah and about passion and sex and actually what keeps a relationship upright is the rather steady mundane tasks of care so yesterday I washed and ironed my girlfriend's onesie and popped it on the pillow and that's I hope an act of love as well as housekeeping should I read it yeah I do really love this but a genuine read love is poets great so it's called Atlas Janette said and it's by you a fan thought there is a kind of love called maintenance which stores the wd-40 and knows when to use it which checks the insurance and doesn't forget the milkman which remembers to plant bulbs which answers letters which knows the way the money goes which deals with dentists and Road fund tax and meeting trains and postcards to the lonely which upholds the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living which is Atlas and maintenance is the sensible side of love which knows what time and weather are doing to my brickwork insulates my faulty wiring laughs at my dry rotten jokes remembers my need for gloss and grouting which keeps my suspect edifice upright in air as Atlas did the sky [Music] William what have we got next we've got a permanent called voice by Anne Samson which I discovered in the early 90s mid nineties and it's one of my favorites we all know about the relationships as she rightly said you know that we there are so many stages of love from infatuation to help me to forget you please if you can sort of imagine the whole range and I love this one because this is really about not being too needy you may love each other but if you if you're if your voice is wrong you can begin to collapse a relationship by missing out on how it really all began over to you Jason boys boys bye and Sansa call by all means just once don't use the broken heart again voice yeah I'm sick to death of life and women and romance voice but with a little help I'll try to struggle on voice expect me the promise and the curse voice the answer phony call me please when you get in voice the nobody knows the trouble I've seen voice the I'd value your advice voice I want the how it was voice the call me irresponsible but ours are nice voice there's such a bastard but I warn them in advance voice that we all have weaknesses and mine is being wicked voice the life short and wasting times the only vice voice the stay in touch but out of reach voice I want to hear the things it's better not to broach voice the things is wiser not to voice voice I suppose as well William listening to that there is a way of communicating something to somebody in a rather lovely way yes which in any other conversation might go a bit wrong well that's certainly true and I think of course there's the other side of it which you know we've all learned to our cost that it's not what you say often in life in relationships but how you say it and they've obviously I played a lot of bad guys ever and I could say could you pass the salt please darling and that sounds like I wish I'd never married you it just means can you pass the salt but that's why I get cast as bad guys well we'll work on it later I'd love to hear you sound loving and I don't get put that in the wrong way it's sitting context perhaps we should move on to the next time and William I think this one's a one for you this is called the price by Stuart Hanson I love this poem so I discovered this the first year I did National Poetry Day which was about 20-something years ago and I got a grant from the Arts Council to help National Poetry Day and not knowing the full rules I decided to fly post this poem all around Britain which is will offer you're supposed to do with Arts Council funding and I deftly picked spots where buses had to stop and I had them fly posted at sort of double-decker level I live in lab retrievin for those of you know that part of London there's this point underneath the Westway and the underground railway where the bus has to stop and if this poem makes you think Tom Berg the price by stuart henson sometimes it catches when the fumes rise out among the throbbing lights of cars or as you look away to dodge eye contact with your own reflection in the carriage glass or in a waiting room a face reminds you that the color supplements have lied and some have pleasure and some pay the price then all the small securities you built about your house your desk your calendar are blown like straws and momentarily as if a scent of ivy or the earth had opened up a childhood door you pause to take the measure of what might have been against the kind of life you settled for [Music] be my guess I guess that is also an antidote to some what you're saying earlier about what we see on social media it's that sort of idea what could have been what could have been what could have been and what could have been for other people if life is good for you I think it works in both ways you know it can be a sort of personal gaze in the mirror or it can be an act of concern for others there are a lot of poems on there that are about being prepared to risk something yes rather than sitting your nice cozy corner yes because everybody at some point gets there on a border of common sense and either they can cross over to the unknown or they can turn back to the warm lights and the sofa and that's that crossing over isn't it very much so and you know one of the reasons there are so many in the book is that a lot of people come to talk to me about lacking encourage almost as though they're the Larne in The Wizard of Oz that there's something they really want to do in life and it might be Goten to get into relationship get out of relationship write a book paint a painting somehow change in some way and they need a little something to give them the courage to start and I choose a wonderful tiny little one in the book by Christopher Lowe which which I give people it's called come to the edge and it goes come to the edge it's too high come to the edge I'm too scared come to the edge and they came and he pushed and they flew to that [ __ ] you vote on next that's Wendy cope isn't it easy to see this is this is tea towel poetry at its best Wendy cope and sometimes we overthink things don't we and you need something which is almost a little bit of a ditty but nevertheless has a great truth in it you were saying that earlier tell me what and tell them what you told me I love I also love Wendy cope with this poem and just to be funny and true and that's rare because sometimes in order to be funny you bend truths you exaggerate you manipulate reality but this has a simple you know you know genuine thoughts within it and yet I think it's also deeply silly that should I read it go on go on then when it's Wendy Kobe she said this is called two cures for love one don't see him don't phone or write a letter to the easy way get to know him better [Music] and that actually that's the perfect antidote to this idea that it's all quite gloomy it's when you're sad it's fun reaching deep parts of you if it is even the tea-towel poem and it works nothing wrong with detailed poems I've got loads of home on the auger there's nothing wrong with the occasional there was an old man from devices no I mean poetry's it can make you smart doesn't have to evoke some incredible maelstrom of serious feelings that can also be frivolous J's capitalist sorry to bring all that to Harry Potter if you had a magic wand what do you are what would you do to the syllabus to make poetry more engaging for people at school because I remember it as a thing that needed to be deconstructed to pass exams as opposed to things that made me laugh or feel I'd be much more broadchurch about what poetry is you know rap music has transformed modern culture the last 30 years it's filled most incredible poetry and that's what teenagers and adolescents relate to so sorry sorry you know that's one element of it but actually I train the trainer's you know I think the real problem is teachers are completely intimidated by poetry themselves and therefore they swerve around to avoid really understanding how to teach it and the key is context as you know this is what this evening is all about and I think that's where I'd get to work in teacher training kids who are studying the moment one doing GCSEs it feels to me like the problem of the gauging of literature is that you're going to have to come up with a written answer an analysis and that precludes any kind of original feeling or just saying makes me laugh or you know you have to find words and quotes and and and support things so the first second you engage with it you're beginning to look at it as something mechanical I do I would put a word in for the teachers though I don't think I don't think it's it's I think a lot of it is about the sort of squashing of the syllabus and the way particularly ants are beginning to be taught without wishing to get on any high horses but I think you you coin it much earlier on which is poetry is to be spoken out loud and I think it can be fun and I think demystify whether whether you're reading out a rap you've written or whether you're you know doing something that's sonnet by Shakespeare they're all equal validity and they should all be allowed in the school within the scope of the classroom I believe isn't there something else there William which even adults would have which is a fear that I'm not getting it you know I'm meant to be seeing layers of meaning and levels of understanding and actually I'm just thinking you know yes yeah which is why I said earlier on read it read it out aloud in your head and read it a number of times in different moods you know you do a really good painting or a really extraordinary piece of music you don't decode it on the spot you know you look at it you listen to it I mean I when I was young and I saved up for my album my vinyl album I'd buy it because there were a couple of songs that I'd heard on Radio one and there'd be the hits and there been this really tricky song on the back of side two and I think what's that but once I played the album over and over and over and over again that was my song and those two rather cloying songs I'd heard and read it when I never wanted to listen to again and in that sense with all art you need to give it some attention and put some effort in it in a way if something pleases you superficially it doesn't necessarily have the layers I just remembered years ago I was in a production if I'm not superstitious but as there's a lot of people in this room I'll say the Scottish play in case anybody has an adverse reaction and a part of the theatre sort of outreach was to go into a couple of local schools and I went into one school with a couple of the other actors to sort of give them a half hour or an hour of you know Shakespeare they were really riotous I mean they wouldn't shut up and I suddenly had this feeling that the only thing that would shut them up was if I just launched into Mark Antony's speech from Julius Caesar I don't know why I just thought I've tried everything else so I just went and my heart was in my mouth I have never felt more nervous in front of any audience and I just did it and I picked out one of them's Brutus and you know and they shut up but you know I'd spend we'd spent 10 or 15 minutes you know going can you be quiet please can you be quiet so we can get you to create a tableau about war and it was like I just it was a moment of going what arrogance to think that I needed to get in the way of what we were there to deliver and to just involve them in that way you can get between these great pieces of writing and students you don't have to do sometimes so what afterwards oh well then you know then they quite noisy again but there was a little bit of time and then they were like could you do another one oh yeah wait here to learn what did you did you you held forth stood up yeah Brutus unfortunately yeah on to our next poem and William this one's for you this is called the mistake by James Fenton I like this poem very much we all make mistakes we know we make mistakes we're not with terribly good at taking responsibility for our mistakes or really genuinely engaging with them and James Fenton has a peculiar ability to you tell us in a way how we should deal with our mistakes so Helena their mistake by James Fenton with the mistake your life goes in Reverse now you can see exactly what you did wrong yesterday and wrong the day before and each mistake leads back to something worse and every nuance of your hypocrisy toward yourself and every excuse stands solidly on the perspective lines and there is perfect visibility what an Enlightenment the colonnade rolls past on either side you needn't move the statues of your errors brush nor sleeve you watch the tail turn back and you're dismayed and this dismay at this at this big mistake is made worse by the sight of all those who knew all along where these mistakes would lead those frozen friends who watched the crisis break why didn't they say oh but they did indeed said with a murmur when the time was wrong or by a mild refusal to assent or told you plainly but you would not heed yes you can hear them now it hurts it's worse than any snare from any enemy take this dismay lay claim to this myths take look straight along the lines of this reverse [Music] Genet our next poem feeling and fly yes I'm very grateful to William for this poem because I didn't know it and I'm not sure I would have found it I mean that's the wonderful thing about the poetry conversation because we can't find everything by ourselves you know the whole point of this is the collective process isn't it we share things it's about communication and I didn't know it and it's wonderful and it's beautiful and it's really a poem about the way we beat ourselves up when things go wrong particularly in relationships especially in relationships you know when something fails that you've loved and you've lost and you think oh I've just got it all wrong again you know I can't commit I can't get it right I can't do any of the things you're meant to do to have this long happy collective together but in fact it's wrong and that's what the poem is about it's really saying you did fly you got to the edge of the cliff and you flew and you had something and it was real and it couldn't last forever and don't break your heart look at the joy that you had and celebrate that and there'll be people here I should think you are having a breakup or I've had one and it's the way we go back and sometimes our selves or hate our partner and then we forget all the glory and we rewrite the narrative and that's really the bit where you sin against the light when you rewrite the past into into your own discordant present because it was glorious when it happened wasn't it and so we're going to have this poem chasing our heads Jason failing and flying by Jack Gilbert everyone forgets that Icarus also flew it's the same when love comes to an end or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake to everybody said it would never work that she was old enough to know better but anything worth doing is worth doing badly like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of it the Stars burning so extravagantly those that anyone can tell you they would never last every morning she was asleep in my bed I could visitation the gentleness in her like aunt Ella standing in the dawn mist each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming the see light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that listen to while we ate lunch how can they say the marriage fail like the people who came back from Provence but it was Provence and said it was pretty that the food was greasy I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell but just coming to the end of his triumph [Music] educator is animate every one rewrites the past into their discordant present your line fabulous next one William love after love love after love but just going back from if we do all feel so often about relationships that when they end somehow that that does mean failure and it is such a bizarre idea isn't it I mean we all have this thing that you know we lived so long and all that kind of thing that relationships don't necessarily laugh - like last a lifetime but there is somehow this social pressure in a way that says that divorce all these kinds of things is somehow a failure and I think we've slightly got that wrong love after love by Derek Walcott I think this poem rather like the mistake and the price are about that business of coming to terms with ourselves this business have been able to look oneself in the mirror as it says in the price without without wanting to turn one's eyes away from one's own gaze and this is a really important poem to me by Derek Walcott and Helena Helena is now going to read it to you love after love by Derek Walcott the time will come when with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door in your own mirror and each will smile or the others welcome and say sit here eat you will love again the stranger who was yourself give wine give bread give back your heart to itself to the stranger who has loved you all your life whom you ignored for another who knows you by heart take down the love letters from the bookshelf the photographs the desperate nervous peel your own image from the mirror set feast on your life [Music] you were talking earlier I just want to explore this with you and them about the power of poetry which is when you realize that somebody else it is is feeling felt exactly as you feel and has found a way to express it better than you can almost even know yourself yes I mean is that is that for you the heart of why a poem becomes powerful I mean perhaps it company yes I I mean I think the word complicity I'd rather a rather should give some a quote by uninvent it which I think I put it I put in the book because it summed it up much better than I consummate are the best moments in reading are where you come across something a thought a feeling a way of looking at things which you thought special in particular to you now here it is set down by someone else a person you have never met someone even who is long dead and it's as if a hand has come out and taken yours I and I suppose I mean I don't if I'm allowed to ask this off when you're acting and you are the sort of prism through which your audience is receiving those words there's a sort of I don't know the challenge for you and engine in in that communication perhaps more so with pert poetry than with for me it's more when you sit in audience there's something that happens in the big dark room with hundreds of people that it's never the bit you think that gets the laugh or the gospel but it's just some bit of human behavior some some little bit of truth and you can feel collectively in a room people go oh yeah I've thought that I've done that and somehow it makes people feel less alone quite much nicer always to see plays films all those things with other people that just there's something about telling a story the specifics of that the architecture of the human mind and heart that if you witness it and particularly we were to sit with and around other people you've suddenly feel less alone unless uniquely to you know totally unique but also when you're on a stage presumably when you have the audience respond it must change the way you then continue I mean does it bring it alive for you and I mean it's the sort of sounds trite to say it but I imagine that you perform differently when you hear the response I'm not an actor well I've played one part just got through that door [Applause] and somebody seemed nervous to pull out and I got away with it but I don't know if it's the same for proper actors but I think it's about a resonance you get in your home with sort of quite an emotional person it's you feel it you say something that's true and it immediately resonates inside as a truth and that's what's connecting you it's not necessarily audible gasps and audience because I don't know that they gossip a lot do they and they might do but it's it's it's about a profound truth and in a world where we're supposed to be unique and you know super successful actually it's finding out the comfort I find is finding out how mundane I am how all these things we really feel together a different audience every night does make it different every night and the moment you are in any way in denial of that or forget that is when it starts to feel stale and that's all you need to do to remind yourself that there's a completely different set of people out there our next poem which is I'm not sure who's Jeannette I think it's one for you is it all that gold does not live oh no no William this is a very old fashioned poem we've talked Harry Potter now we can talk Tolkien you are sturly Iram about people coming to talk to one and you feeling that you don't have much to offer and it's certainly true that a lot of people come and talk to me and their lives are unremittingly difficult and and it's hard to find anything for them that they can take away to hold on to often people who've experienced loss of a child or grandchild or often people who are elderly and feel that the doors have closed to them in so many ways so as I said it's a rather old fashioned poem but it has a wonderful impact and rather like Jeannette talking about tea-towel poems or whatever this is something that I'd always keep by my side to give me hope all that his gold does not glitter by JRR Tolkien's all that his gold does not glitter not all those who wander are lost the old that is strong does not wither deep roots are not reached by the frost from the ashes of fire shall be woken a light from the shadows shall spring renewed shall be blade that was broken the crownless again shall be king Jeannette was talking earlier about a poem that she'd come across because of the book where do you get your poems from well because I've been doing this quite a long time God lost them with me already in my head and I just found them on the way once Elisabeth schenkman had persuaded penguin that there should be a book of these I then realized I needed some more so I haunted particularly this sounds a bit strange but i haunted second-hand book shops which were filled with old anthologies of poetry long since out of print I was inspired by Jeanette who has a wonderful website where she always puts on a poem whenever she's discovered something that she loves and shares with us and all kinds of anthologies the wonderful Neil Ashley founder of blood acts who did stay alive which many of you probably know through enormous and volumes was amazing woman called Jane Davis who runs an organization called the reader which helps people in prisons and old people's homes and all around the country with inspirational literature so I just knocked and sifted and by the end I wanted to read some fiction is the awful truth you must have come across an awful lot of drafts in that yes I'm draw it's subjective isn't it you know I do you know see performance poetry I do go and see performance poetry every year I am part of a thing called the forward prize which makes an anthology called the forward book of poetry which comes out every year and it's a wonderful to Top of the Pops of contemporary poetry but but not cover versions the real thing yeah and that's a wonderful source for me of inspiration of finding a voice you read one poem by a poet in anthology and you think gosh I've never heard of him or her and then you go in pursuit of more of their work but in the end I was really looking for homes that I thought would help I wasn't really looking at the authors and I've had a slightly tricky moment the last few weeks because I'm delighted that penguin and America have decided to publish this book in October but they but they wanted lots of American poets added or some American poets added and they were saying you know fire me an asian-american or fire me an african-american try me this or this or that and of course that's the wrong way around that's a needle in a haystack you know I'm trying to find the poem that's going to change and and help so please get now got to the point where you could and suppose like when you go to a GP and they're just tapping into the computer where you can say what's your problem and then you can you know well yes and no I mean it's certainly true that in when I'm doing a pharmacy I think I thought the analogy would be the GP who says who says actually most people suffer from the same problems you know they'll have some obscure illnesses coming their way but my GP is antibiotics whatever so I suppose that's probably so there's an element of that but um every once in a while I'm confounded because someone walks in I got an email today from someone who said my father always wanted me to be a boy and I'm not and I never will be and I'm 54 and I'm still suffering can you send me a poem for that and I'm still puzzling so if anyone has any thoughts yeah well there's a really good being different I just came across just called bedazzles I think it is I have to remember who I think readers at home or Edie er yeah and that's just maybe person to tears it was about if you were mocking people who are different about the boy who wants to wear a dress about the person who doesn't fit into their own skin then you should hope to have so much bravery in your heart as they do yes you know and it's really good did you say bedazzled I think I Anna Andrews no I think I can I tell you what well [ __ ] if I can borrow your phone while you find it there you go I was only using it for your time but actually I've in the in the back of a book a littles an email address so saying if there any poems that you recommend to help people send them my way and I'm hoping that will save me hours of anthologized I was going to ask you where you as well well how you find um if you're putting one up you know I'm so regularly you know where do you do hunter down new paths yeah I just I'm going to book shops I look on the poetry table it's always a good idea you know proper bookshop will always have new poetry that's out and it's a really good way to store I also book book shops are communal collective places that we should support and the Amazon algorithm is never gonna help you so you want to go in the place where the blosum obviously and just have a look and ask your friends but I think that's the point is we're never going to discover it all but if we decide we're going to discover some of it we're going to find a lot more than if we just sit at home with the Oxford book of English verse ok well let's hear now I think this is a permanent you okay oh is it golden retrievers over there yes I really do well in in 2007 I had a complete breakdown and it was 50/50 whether I'd be here but obviously I am and when I was recovering I had no language of my own and it's the first time language has ever left me and it was very frightening and so what I did was I didn't know William then but I was really doing what William prescribes in that the only way that I could stop the crazy voices that were in my head was by reading poetry and I used to read it out loud in front of the bathroom mirror and as I read the strong sane voice of the poem would be enough to silence the destructive obsessive voices that were in my head and I could see the panic disappear from my face if you ever read poetry in front of the mirror you do see the change in yourself that they say the physiognomy that the physicality of poetry look these guys know it better than me the whole thing about having these lines some light isn't your being isn't it it's not from the neck up it's everything it's got spleen our livers in you tissue muscle blood and you get that when you do it and it was you know sometimes I was living in a haunted house and I'd never know when the thing would strike me and knock me down and sometimes I was just clinging on to the edge of the boat but poetry was that boat and that's why I trust it and lying in bed recovering I was reading a memoir by mark Doty called dog years which is about living with dogs living with loss but nothing is ever just about living with dogs is it how many people here have got a dog not enough well the Blue Cross is going to be busy after this so this is golden retrievals by not dirty fetch balls and sticks capture my attention seconds at a time catch I don't think so Bonnie tumbling leaf a squirrel who's oh joy actually scared sniff the wind then I'm off again mock palm ditch residue of any thrillingly dead thing and you either you're sunk in the past half of our walk thinking of what you never can bring back or else you're offering some fog concerning tomorrow is that what you call it my work to unsnap times warg I'm wolf retrieving my haze headed friend you The Shining bark a Zen masters bronzy Gong calls you here entirely now but Wow Bow Wow Bow Wow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] every day you don't go brilliant do you remember that moment you remember the moment when you were reading that in the mirror yes and also the girl thing about poetry obviously it's serious it's profound it's deep but also it can just make you laugh can't it and it can chew on sometimes doing animal impersonations is a good idea what you might want to date I'm gonna coming up for questions now from the audience and we've got four microphones so what I'd like you to do while we've make some animal noises here on stage is to get the four microphones out if you could put your hand up if you have a question whether it - I guess I guess - anybody on the stage I'm not sure about about poetry ideally yeah would that be friend if you found it well go on have a think about your questions while Sue tells us go on what's the poem it's not quite right for your situation but I just I just really love it told me to give you what it is or taught me to read it read it I can't but okay it's it very long no it's not that long I just let make you emotional no it's just really lovely I think it's really important as well this particular little Junction read it I read it George so it's predict it was not but not bedazzled I'm a dufus it's by Victoria riedle or Radle re de el tell me it's wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger he is Baudette I see the other mothers looking at the star choker the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock sometimes I help him find sparkle coupons when he says sticker earrings look too fake tell me I should teach him it's wrong to love the glitter that a boys only a boy you'd love a truck with a remote that revs battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels lived a looping off tracks into the tub then tell me it's fine really maybe even a good thing a boy who's got some girl to him and I'm right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park tell me what you need but keep far away from my son who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means this way or that but for the way facets set off prisms and prisms spin up everywhere and from his own jeweled body he's cast rainbows made every shining true color now try to tell me man or woman your heart was ever once that brave [Applause] [Music] who says poetry isn't powerful now there's some questions I'm sure there's going to be so are there's loads okay so I'm gonna start pointing to people number one first please hello we were talking just before the show started about Russian poetry and my friend said that most Russian poetry rhymes and she said lots of English poetry doesn't rhyme I said yeah that's right so she said well what is a poem and I didn't know how to answer so I wondered if you have an answer what is a poem it's the most perfect question thank you it's where we should have started the evening who's gonna can you answer well I think the most important thing is to be really broadchurch about this I think one of the intimidating factors about poetry is an extraordinary sort of snobbery and extraordinary sense that somehow all that I don't know what's good and that's quite problematic and I think that puts people off poetry poetry doesn't need to rhyme often children like rhyming poetry to get them started Shakespeare in blank verse let's face it you know that's pretty much the peak for a lot of people and there aren't necessarily obvious rhymes in that so to me a poem is what you choose is a poem and I give you a good example I've put in this book a wonderful piece of poetry I think which is what people sing at Anfield on a Saturday afternoon which are the words from the musical carousel and and it goes you'll never walk alone you remember that and I think that's a wonderful piece of poetry walk on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone you'll never walk alone Jeanette how do you answer the question I do like it to have a bit of meter in scansion I must say but it's really what work of the words doing are they carrying their own weight are they are they carrying the weight of the line is there something muscular and held about it because it's language at its most concentrated isn't it and it's it's the place where the thing is distilled in into the tightest possible place and so that you can trust it to break under you when you put your own weight on it so the thing is always stronger than it looks for me that's important but it is this concentration of language absolutely I don't I don't think it has to be the best words in the best order but I think it does have to be was the harvest kind of exactness for the emotion because it's usually a snapshot of an emotional moment isn't it so how do we get that concentration that distillation so that we can hold on to it so that it feels homeopathic that it's a tiny dose of poetry we'll somehow write the whole or or even chiropractic I guess you know you just press on the thing and the whole thing will then go back into play something like that isn't it I remember you saying I'm talking about art and saying everything in life is so fractured but actually when you suddenly are able to just look at a picture you are experiencing something that is whole that is complete and that's a rare thing that it's almost like oxygen and then in a sense there's there's that quality to a poem it is it exists within its own bubble it's it's it's own thing it's you can you can absorb it in one go I think it makes a poem yeah I'm not you I do like a bit of skunk ssin I don't I don't need to dum dee-dum dee-dum I don't need to know how many feet it's got and you know marvel at this sort of you know I think that's what kills at home sometimes a nice sort of studied literature and smacked it out of me in it but it's something as you say a it contains a a beautiful truth within it it contains a sentiment that rings true for you emotionally that you can take with you that as we've said before expresses a a common conceit elegantly and beautifully and moves your feelings not only connects your feelings the greater worker to the world around you but elevates your thinking alongside your fellow man on and mindful we've spent seven minutes on the first it's worth it and we've got 50 minutes what it's a great question but if I wouldn't even attend to once I know what it does the great poem does a kind of a focal shift it's like a magic I'd picture when you stare at a magic libation suddenly you see life or yourself it shines a light in words so I don't care what the structural form of it is but it suddenly it does slap people slaps you in the right way it's it's refocused as you sung on a truth that you you hadn't seen or understood about yourself okay it expresses why yeah beautifully summed up there microphone number two and we'll try and be patient hi but those of us who attempt to write poems do you think it's about rhyme again do you think that you can't use rhyme anymore that rhyme is regarded as glib of nowadays and you can't say anything serious you know it's not just about one rhyme there are all kinds of inner rhymes within the complex line of poetry I'm front Lee I'm looking at the poetry of rap at the moment and if you just simply just rhyme off to rhyme after rhyme after rhyme it does things but it's this these complex inner inner rhythms within sentences or within within lines of poetry that transform okay question microphone number three I have a question for William I've just bought a copy of your book the poetry pharmacy and I was just wondering if there are any poems in there for survivors who posted me too in various social media sites no but that's a good point and perhaps before I finally finished the next 100 forgot for normal a woman's silly me yes why don't you read it's phenomenal woman I read it gopher gopher I think it's act doesn't it I love that you could immediately reach for that pearl well it's I thought it was very me too but now I should I read it please it's fun well I think it's that it's the poem I prescribed to people who are going to a party it's what you need to read before you go or going to a poetry reading yep through a nominal woman this is by the great Maya Angelou pretty women wonder where my secret lies I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model sighs but when I start to tell them they think I'm telling lies I say it's in the reach of my arms the span of my hips the stride of my steps the curl of my lips I'm a woman phenomenally Phenomenal Woman that's me I walk into a room just as cool as you please and to a man the fellows stand or fall down on their knees and then they swarm around me a hive of honey bees I say it's the fire in my eyes and the flesh of my teeth and the swing of my waist and the joy in my feet I'm a woman phenomenally Phenomenal Woman that's me men themselves have wondered what they see in me they're trying so much but they can't touch my inner mystery when I try to show them they say this ooh can't see I say it's in the arch of my back the Sun of my smile the ride of my breasts the grace of my style I'm a woman phenomenally Phenomenal Woman that's me now you understand just why my head's not bowed I don't shout or jump about or have to talk real loud when you see me passing it ought to make you proud I say it's in the click the bend of my hair the palm of my hand and the need for my tear because I'm a woman phenomenally Phenomenal Woman that's me [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] another question have we got to there's a hand up in the middle here microphone - I just wanted to ask an editorial questions William and when you were putting together this anthology did you feel like you had to sort of stop yourself from going any further because it is a really beautifully slim volume just wondering if you put a self limit on it or if it was just naturally the size thank you no I think I'm quite lazy at heart and something about the slim nature of it perhaps poetry often is slim in terms of the size of the books that you come across no I think probably sloth is is the only excuse you didn't wrestle for hours getting thinking no this one of this one I well I did but of course quite a lot of poems cover similar things and so then it was a question of trying to narrow down which is the best well I couldn't possibly say that so it's good because you can put this you can take it in your pocket in your handbag it's light and that's the kind of thing you want to carry around with you don't want some three volume normal do oh yeah very good okay listen Michelle Williams book for the moment another question from the audience over here we've got a microphone over there we've got two questions over there [Laughter] and if we get your phone out there this is so an unbeaten Scott Kizer and can the panel recommend a poem that will help us cope with brexit okay actually can they come back to that question and put it don't worry don't worry I'm just hitting pause for the moment let's have another question before we come back to that microphone three so thank you very much for everything that you've read and said poetry is indeed transformational and as a teacher who loves texts and shares them with their students I wonder particularly if those of you who've performed might say something about how you can free students through the way you deliver poetry particularly thinking maybe about the classroom well tell me what experience I suppose with you know I mean it was shouting it at them was it was just losing yourself in them I don't mean shouting I mean you know it was a doing the triple holding one it was trusting the material actually and I remember regretting that we hadn't just I thought there's a version where you just don't like you know like you go into a French class and you're not allowed to speak English there's a version of you know trying to get kids involved with Shakespeare well you just only talked to them and I am the pentameter or you know I'm sure that you know there's that exist but I the thing I thought of when he was the question was an Isis berry the sort of godmother of voice at the RSC said let the words do something to you don't do something to the words amazing in every classroom to have all these these poems these resources filed away under different emotions so if kids felt lonely or lost or bullied or different and isolated they could just rifle through and start in their spare time to investigate them and I think some kids it's having the permission to read and to experience things and have their own agency in a in a system that sometimes quite driven and singular context i mean i'd go back to context anytime if i was involved in teaching poetry at school it's giving people the context first and then the poem and that brings it alive to them well now drama school we did similar we took a shakespeare workshop around various different places and weed sprees the scene and let them ask us any questions and we went to a huge wide eclectic mix of educational establishments from local community adult community colleges to very posh private schools and it was very striking how in the schools where they were likely to and aspiring to get our levels nay levels they were asking his questions to make sure they were on the right track to get the to get the right answer and in other places when we took bits of hamlet into a school they'd never seen it before they would talk about that their mom had remarried and for the to get the council flat or whatever you know and I'm never doing the scene where Polonius was behind the Arras and gets stabbed and we stopped and we said does he know he's behind the heiress or not and there and in Roedean they all had the answer because they knew then they were all gonna get aids available on the other place they weren't sure they were pretty right they were they wanted to know if it could be done both ways and we played the scene both ways and it brought it a life for them so just extrapolating than that the thing about poetry or any literature if you take away if you can with the syllabus that you're you know struggling under if you take away the notion that there is an answer to anything or a right answer you can just let them enjoy it and thrive and play with it and ask each other questions and their own and just remove it from the exam or testing syllabus at all I think that's the key what she said was the fun bit so not what I said though no but we can make it fun I think as adults we forget how to play and we don't do enough playing in our daily life and and with the kids we got to make the serious fun and the fun series just got to swap it up and musicality there's an innate sense of rhythm and things that help us in this in poetry that as we said it does something to us so we have to shout oh we can do crazy games with poetry like could say alternate words make it fun you've got to get out of your head you got to get the kids out of their heads get out get them stop thinking that there is a prescribed answer or we got it as you say we got to get we got to be judged how clever we are forget it this this is a piece to be somehow owned and enjoyed and and you can discover it by playing that's very cheesy so yes [Applause] very cheesy to pull it back to Harry Potter what what the books watch what Joe's books did is they ignited the loving of literature in children all over the world that saw them my kid read them all because she wanted to come to a screening and hasn't stopped reading since and the same thing is true if you get poems if you're allowed to teach and use poetry and performance poetry that there are either silly or fun or engaging you can it's a gateway drug to the may be more challenging poetry and so it's a it's about making it distinct completely engaging say I think Yeats talked about poetry coming from irrational intelligence not rational intelligence so wouldn't it be great if we could invite young people to bring a bit of a rationality into a classroom instead of everything being so kind of linear right suppose as well I think yeah just in order to appreciate poems it's great to have written your own and to say to a class you know your assignment is to just go and play as you say and have fun and you know pick any topic you like and then you can read them out and it's by writing your own poem you then feel you know you're not to separate from those who've written it you've gone before you it's not so distant craft it's one that you also can can own the thing you do rehearsals sometimes of a good pursuit brother for a play where you paraphrase because sometimes you having trouble the text you having trouble connecting with it and one of the most situations I work with took the scripts office after the first day read through and made us paraphrase the whole thing so we owned it and then brought the text back in which is fun another tennis ball and just chalk a tennis ball it's so great because it's it just gets rid of a lot of aggression like the dollar to the next person we should give it a shot idea and then you know just fun things like that for young Iran first of all I'm gonna apologize to all those hands that I saw and I put microphones out because we're already running a bit over because it's about time to hit play again I think which was as I hit pause on somebody over there it's like right which we know what the question was was was there a poem for brexit now the answer I was pre-empting what I think the answer is gonna be and I'm gonna you better answer that question whatever might be the clothes well for our last poem I thought I'd read you a prescription first and and then Tom will read the poem and I tried to construct this book a bit like a Victorian herbalist so that you you can look in the index for your condition and that will refer you back to prescription and poem or prescriptions and poems for that condition so this prescription is for fear of the other also suitable for lack of empathy individualism isolation brexit [Laughter] although it started life in a work of pros John Dunn's famous no man is an island Passage has long been distributed and shared as verse it certainly seems to me to have an enormous poetic value in power it is also bursting with relevance for modern life despite being almost 400 years old as the Western world struggles to deal with a volume of refugees unprecedented since the second world war it seems that our supplies of empathy and human fellow-feeling are increasingly falling short of demand it's very easy especially when we feel threatened or frightened to allow people of other races religions or national origins to fall into the vague category of the other these others are terrifying their unfamiliarity and their seeming lack of loyalty to our values can make us feel that they are less deserving of our finer instincts sometimes even we can feel that they are less deserving of that title human yet we know and history has shown us on many occasions that only terrible things can come from this instinct we all have more in common than what divides us the fundamental values and needs of humanity are universal the lazy or vicious thinking that would leave some of us out in the cold that would undervalue their very lives based on some arbitrary question of color or faith is one of our species most crude and destructive trays in our more recent moments none of us could disagree with Don's premise although he speaks only of Europe the wider application is clear whatever sunders us from other people whether it is death or our cruelty and callousness diminishes the fabric of humanity itself we would do well to allow Don's words to remind us of that [Applause] [Music] now man is an island by John Donne no man is an island entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent a part of the main if a clod be washed away by the sea Europe is the less as well as if a promontory were as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know For Whom the Bell Tolls it tolls for thee [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen just to let you know that Williams the poetry pharmacy if it hasn't been plugged enough it's out in the foyer and I think Janette you've got some some of your books out there as well I think it might oh I'm not sure I've been I've been told that you have so the last thing to say is thank you to Jason Isaacs Helena Bonham Carter [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 639,676

Rating: 4.9426069 out of 5

Keywords: intelligence squared, iqsquared, intelligence2, is debates, poetry, oratory, great oratory, poems, Jeanette Winterson, William Sieghart, Sarah Montague, the poetry pharmacy, Jason Isaacs, Helena Bonham-Carter, Sue Perkins, Tom Burke, depression, gender, mental health, John Donne

Id: WKoVNqjNqtY

Length: 89min 8sec (5348 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018