[Katy Evans-Bush]

Hi Cally. Well, the Collecteds seem to be out of print but you can still get the individual books: Shibboleth, Errata, Conjure and Safest. Start with any of them. From the US your best bet might be ABEbooks, but have a look round...

I looked at your links Maryann, and I've seen that interview before - nice to see it still on there! I clicked at random and heard Michael talking about the way poery and dance are two [rehistoric art forms, and both created to enable memory - that is, to enable information to be stored within them, to be transmitted, as he says, from person to person - or even generation to generation. This is a central tenet of his work and gets to the heart of itvery quickly - the fact that what we're doing when we write a poem - or read a poem - is taking part in something hardwired into being human. And the connection between poetry and dance: there's a poem, and a Selected volume, called "Remembering the Steps to Dances Learned Last Night." In his monograph Wallflowers, which is absolutely fascinating from start to finish and once again contains most of his essential ideas about what poetry is - he describes the pattern he imagines might be left on the floor, tracing the movements of dancers' feet, as the equivalent of a written record of the dance - the way written poetry is the record of the poetry in real time. We were doing both long before we could write.

He was fascinated by mnemonics, the tools that were developed to aid memory. The Renaissance Memory Palaces were enormous constructs where each "room" in the palace would be accessed - along with its information - according to where it was situated, both on its own and in relation to other "rooms."

This reminds me of a book I wanted to read, maybe it's out now and I should look. A few years ago the Royal Shakespeare Company performed the entirety of Shakespeare's history plays, using one company over two or three years. A staggering feat for them - memorising all these plays. I read it in the Sunday papers, I think, an interview with the director about how they went about memorising, & I'm sure there was going to be a book... Of course, actors learn lines, but they don't JUST learn lines. I was talking to one of them about this, because I knew a couple of people in the cast. He said it was very holistic. They learned the lines, sure, but the tools they used were blocking, cues, the words and sounds that go with a certain movement - they learn the dance of it, in other words, and they learn it physically as much as intellectually. Michael would have loved that.

It's important to remember - and I very much think this, and I think it's partly how you develop your ear, and Michael used to talk about it - that words are physical. Your speech affects your breathing, which affects your oxygen levels, slows or speeds up your body - words produce sound waves that go through your head, waves are physical. He pointed out - maybe in Wallflowers - that even if you just you move your lips silently to yourself as you read, tests have shown that your brain registers it as real speech. I'll look for the quote.