On poetry and reading loud

This past weeks I've been taking part in a 5 mondays long course on how to work with reading poetry loud. The course is given by actor Henric Holmberg, who created the course because he wished he could go such a course himself. He has a long time experience of reading poetry, creating performances with a big portion of poetry reading, and as an actor he's brilliant with making the words come in a way you are hit by the deeper message.
Each monday all of us prepare to read two poems, infront of the rest of the group, and Henric gives us feed back.

This whole workshop has been so right on the spot for me. It's close to preparing songs for a concert. There's a big difference in reading with eyes or reading loud, and when I reherse my songs for a concert things start to happen when I spend time with the words and melody doing it loud. It's almost impossible to try to incorporate the material with just reading it with my eyes.

Henric also said many times that when a material of poems (or songs, in my daily work) is resting for a while the deeper parts of our conciousness keep on working with it. I recognize this. A concert done a year ago that is revitalised is somehow more mature and comes out again in a new form. Like now, I have to re-create the christmas songs for this years performances, and it never feels old or the same. I'm one year richer in experience and the songs will reflect other things, I'm able to deal with the songs from new levels.

It would also be interesting to go through the songs just reading them, as poems. Work it through the way we have worked in Henrics course. We've trained a lot how to gather focus, how to work with tempo, with starts and endings, with voice possibilities. All poems can't be read the same, the particular poem (or song) evoke different volume, speed, rythm.

The first session with Henric I recognized his voice. I was outside the room where we work, hanging up my jacket, and Henric was talking to someone in the other room. Without seeing the person talking I knew exactly that it's him doing the speaker voice in the awesome short film "Den fjärde kungen" by Ted Sieger. In my family we sometimes gather friends for a film-party shortly after christmas, seeing Den fjärde kungen. I love the film and I cry at the end every time I see it.

Thank you Henric for bringing the stories and poetry loud and live.
Eva