CATCHING THE RHYTHM.

I was thinking about my neighbour and planning my next visit to encourage him to enjoy learning English. Whilst thinking, “Why do I let myself get into these situations?” It was a rhetorical question as the answer was all too apparent to those who knew me, I love to encourage learning. It doesn’t really matter what subject you pick or when it happens, My belief is that you should grab any and every opportunity to learn more about the world in which you live.

Take for example Ink? A wonderfully simple three letter word. Used to enable words to become viable to the naked eye. Words to reveal their meanings. To enable words to be recorded long after the writer has disappeared from view. Which would lead me into poetry and how language can be physical as well as visual. Which would hopefully spark more interest in acquiring more of that tough language to learn, common English. That commonly used by who speak it as their native tongue. Then perhaps my neighbour would feel more confident to use and expand on his, knowledge of it. English that is! Next I got out my little notebook of useful poems that I had grown to love over a lifetime and perused it for a suitably meaningful example that I could use. Having located it, I remembered that I also had another book that contained the same poem and drew that down from the shelf to take it with me for my “date”. With that done and refreshed in my memory, I felt ready for the off.

First, let me tell you that my neighbour is a lovely man. His interests are his wife, horses and their training, the arts. He loves paintings and studies them carefully. Enjoys a good joke and is a happy listener. A lot of which we have in common. I am hoping that poetry will be a new one that we can share, hence my choice of one of my early favourites from early childhood. Not the easiest for a non-English speaker but as the dear man could read English quite well enough to study the books on Art that I had given him, hopefully we would manage to surmount any other difficulties that might arise despite my decided lack of experience with his native tongue. Usually his wife would be there to act as interpreter, however today she was out and thus unavailable. I would just have to rely on hand gestures to get me through. That should make him smile, if nothing else!

I arrived with my normal promptness and once we had greeted each other after the European fashion, a kiss on each cheek and one for my hand (rather charmingly carried out), we were ready to do some “work”. I opened the poetry book at the verses that I had decided to utilise and suggested that he should read them through while I made us our usual cup of tea and fetched him some cake that I had made for him to try. When I rattled my way in with the accoutrements to afternoon tea he raised his eyes as if to say “How do you expect me to cope with this?” I spent nearly ten minutes trying to explain how the poet had tried to convey with his use of words his train journey. I tried to get him to understand that the poem was meant to be like the three dimensional version of a film. How the flat white page with its black inked type was in fact, a sensation filled experience when read. Which through his words a visual imagery of the scenes flying by the window of the train, but allows the sounds and feel of the movement of the train journey taken by the poet. When it finally clicked that he had never actually been on a train in his life, I realised that I had given myself a real sticky wicket to deal with. However, that is where the word inspiration through comes into play!

I knew that my pupil loved music. I presumed that he might also have a good sense of rhythm. I hummed a little nursery tune to test out this theory and found that he was following the sounds quite naturally. I asked him to help me by tapping or beating to accompany us as we enjoyed the song together. That worked well. Phew! Light at the end of the tunnel. We were, I hoped, about to make progress. I asked him to read, at the same time listen to me reciting the poem. Then I started to clap each word as I said it following the rhythm of the words about the train as it made its way through the countryside. By the end, he was smiling, the words were making more sense as I explained the he was feeling the rattle, speed and noise of the train, the modern fast form of transport rushed through the rustic rural countryside. Another run through with him joining in where he could with the words but enthusiastically with the rhythmic “beating” of the trains’ wheels on the rails. When we had raced to the finish, the “end of the line” we both broke out in clapping ourselves and the joy of the English language had been born in a foreign soul. Success!