Today at writing group I brought in a vase of daffodils from my yard and shared the classic “I wandered lonely as a cloud” William Wordsworth poem. Many of us know the lines from school. It is something to read them with fresh blossoms in front of you. Like so many things that have become cliche because of frequent exposure, it’s worthwhile to re-experience them as close as possible to what an author’s intent might have been.
Another way to re-vision a familiar piece of writing is to have a young person re-imagine it. In that spirit, I wanted to provide a link to this video of a “daffodil rap.”Beside the Lake and Beside the Tree, a Crowd of Daffodils.
From www.golakes.co.uk/wordsworthrap
According to the tourism webpage, the rap treatment was commissioned not to “dis” Wordsworth, but instead as a celebration. It was created in the “bicentenary year of [the poem's original] publication to help the next generation of Lake District visitors connect with his work” (for more details you can see the tourism page that supplies some background).
Here’s to the constant re-experiencing of great writing.