Remember by Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land.

When you can no more take me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day,

You tell me of our future that you planned.

Only remember me; and understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while,

 and afterwards remember, do not grieve.

For if the darkness and corruption leave

a vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

than that you should remember and be sad.

My students' enthusiasm for this poem has really surprised me positively. Even the most unlikely teen (who my colleagues thought I was mad to try doing poetry with) has got into it. The thought of memorising something for homework instead of doing an exercise has been motivation enough for this student. Seeing the meaning in the poem has inspired the more literary students but nevertheless, I have had responses like 'oh, but it's so sad' and 'yes, but really beautiful'.

Class reciting is coming along bit by bit. This group has been together for a number of years so their group rapport provides a safe environment for them to make mistakes. We are even using the rhythm of the poem to combat the famous flat Spanish intonation when speaking English. I put little pressure on reciting by memory (i.e. I allow them to read if they prefer) but most of them are happier reciting. What is particularly note-worthy is the contrasting long and short vowels (e.g. faaaaar away as opposed to fa away) and the elision between words (e.g. adding the final r to the following vowel (far raway).

At the moment, the first eight 'problem posing' lines of the sonnet are under their belts. For Friday they're trying to learn two more. We discussed methods of memorising but these were unsurprising. Reading, then reciting with the text covered up. I had suggested they might want to count the syllables on their fingers as they said each line (as there are always 10) and they said this helped.

I asked them which parts of the poem were harder to recall and they all agreed, to my surprise again, that the second line was the hardest. The use of 'nor' a new word for them, and 'yet' here with the meaning of 'but' not the usual present perfect use ('I haven't finished yet') However, I have no doubt that learning such words and uses in this context will be very memorable and that these words will stay with the students for longer than if they had simply seen them in a text and looked up the definition in a dictionary.

And this brings me neatly back to the reason behind all of this: is my initial premise of poetry as a motivating vehicle proved right? Well, so far YES. I have these students for three hours a week and I don't go on about poetry for all that time. But opening this window to them is letting them see a different side to English. For a nation who constant berates its youth for 'lack of culture', these young people are keen to see what poetry is all about, which is something I had previously dismissed as 'un-teenagerly'.

The next time I write my blog I will recount the entirely different experience of doing 'It's raining, it's pouring!' with my 8 year old beginners. suffice it to say though, that it worked well too!! (even the very-hard-to pronouce: couldn't get up in the morning!) This came to me inspired by the last few weeks here where it's been raining a lot.

Thanks for reading, and please do comment. I'd love to discuss this further.