This workshop explored poems that capture and describe how music can make us feel.
We began with a wonderful poem by the contemporary American poet and essayist Rita Dove, called ‘The Canary’, which describes the voice of Billie Holiday as full of shadow and light, burned but beautiful ‘a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano’. You can read this poem here and hear Rita Dove herself reading it aloud.
Then we turned to a poem entitled ‘On Seeing Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos Conduct During His 79th Year’ by another contemporary American poet, Peter Galen Massey. As the title suggests this poem describes the experience of watching an elderly but masterful conductor at work and feeling ‘joy’ in his ‘command of mighty sound’.
We then took a musical turn and listened to two classics – Abba, ‘Dancing Queen‘ and Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man‘. Not everyone was a fan of either or both but reading the lyrics of these songs was really illuminating. Why not take a look as well as a listen?
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