The Portal - Love Poetry
Producent: Tove Jonstoij
ELLIOT :
What is a really good love song? And how do you write about love? In this
program you will meet Daniella, Micke and Viktor, who are studying to be
singer-songwriters, and you get to hear two of the most famous love poems in
the world. First, here’s Daniella singing.
DANIELLA’S SONG:
The weather is fine
I’ve been following you around town
You went out from your apartment
at ten past nine
You took the nine fifteen bus
and got off after four stations
Then you met your brother Harry
he almost saw me
KEITH, VIKTOR, MICKE AND DANIELLA:
“-I think in the beginning when you start to write songs…it’s mostly about
relationships, because, in my case I started to write songs when I was about
eleven or twelve years old, and the only thing I thought about then was
relationships and girls and…
- That early!
- Yeah, that early! Twelve years old. It started change, it started to change
things in your body, I think, and yeah, in my case, it was like that. But after
some years…
- Made you tired of it then…
- Yeah, no, you start to look for some new ways of writing.
- When I was eleven I might have written about my dog - that was about it - I
mean, not about girls, I was too young.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08
- Maybe not relationships (when I was) twelve years old, but maybe girls, I
didn’t know much about relationships, I think.
- When did you write your first love song, Daniella?
- I had just turned fifteen actually, so I had not been writing for such a long
time, and I wrote mostly about, like, maybe some experience that I had from
my dad and mom, and when they had a fight or something, and really not
about me, but still it’s…it would be a good song.
- But I think when you write songs and you are that young you’re actually just
projecting everything you’ve heard, up to that stage, into your own song.
You’ve never been in that relationship, but still you can sing about it and you
think you know what it’s about. And I think that’s pretty cool, because love is so
universal, that it relates to even twelve-year-olds, like me and Micke.”
DANIELLA’S SONG:
I’ve been living in a dream
But today I woke up, I woke up
Oh no, I’m not stalking you,
but you said you’d stay, you’d stay.
KEITH, VIKTOR, MICKE AND DANIELLA:
“- But what if you’ve never been in love, Micke, can you write a love song if
you’ve never been in love?
- You can write about never being in love, maybe. You can just write a story,
you don’t have to be you that experience it. Like me now: I’ve been together
with my girlfriend about three years now and I can’t keep on writing the same
love songs to her about three years, so I start to, I don’t know…
- She’s bored with your songs now. You’d write something else.
- I’m trying to look for other ways of writing, a love song.
- I think you need to present some kind of a problem, because when I hear a
love song and it’s just about: “I love this guy and he loves me”, and that’s it,
then it’s just a boring love song; but when it’s about chaos in a relationship, or
something like that, then it becomes interesting. Otherwise, you just fall asleep
when you listen to the song, so”.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08
VICTOR’S SONG
All the leaves they blow for you Sofia
They fall to the ground like I fell for you
All my thoughts they go to you Sofia
I think of you like I know you never do
But it’s all right now
My love for you has faded away.
ELLIOT:
Viktor wrote this love song when he was fourteen.
Some love poems seem to live forever, and even though they seem to be very
personal many people have loved them for centuries and felt that they talk
about their feelings. We asked university teacher Stuart (Robertson) what two
famous love poems really mean: William Shakespeare’s Shall I compare thee to
a summer’s day? and Emily Dickinson’s Heart, we will forget him.
ELINOR COLEMAN reads the poem, Heart we will forget him, by Emily
Dickinson, 1830-1886.
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, tonight!
STUART:
“It takes one person, but she identifies herself, or this kind of self, as two
people, so in the first line it’s ‘We will forget him’. It’s like an address or a
dialog with the self, because who is this ‘we’? Well, it’s the poet and their
heart.”
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08
When you have done, pray tell me
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging.
I may remember him!
STUART:
“This is a poem about love. It’s a poem about a person. It’s also about loosing
that person, and that first line ‘Heart, we will forget him!’ is an injunction, it
says: “We will forget him!” But of course, it also includes the idea that actually,
the speaker can’t forget whoever it is they’re thinking of. And of course, trying
to forget is a funny idea. How can you forget? How can you try to forget
something? As soon as you try to forget it you by definition remember it. And
it’s in very few words, and that’s probably one of the differences between
poetry and song, that songs probably try to have, or need to have, more words,
whereas a poem, especially something like a poem by Emily Dickinson have
very few words, and concentrate that idea into this very few words.”
OLIVER BEE reads Shakespeare's sonnet 18, Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08
STUART:
“Many of the early sonnets were really about showing off. They were about the
poets showing off and they were quite often not getting what you wanted.
And, at the end of this poem, we have the idea, that this piece of writing
captures a feeling, and that by capturing the feeling, keeps it, shares it with the
reader, and shares it with the future: ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can
see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee’. So, people grow old, and
people die, but writing carries on. And, that has to be one of the best reasons,
one of the most important reasons, for writing, that words carry on; words live
on, after the feeling has passed, after people have passed.”
TOVE AND STUART:
”- Do you have a piece of advice to give to somebody who would like to write
about love?
- Oh, that’s quite hard. Poems need to show the reader something, not tell
them. It’s no good to tell the reader that you’re in love, because, well, why
should they be interested in you being in love? But if you can show them what
it is to be in love, or to show them the experience, then that’s another matter.
Good love poem shows the experience of love, which might be hard, might be
painful, it might be marvellous and overwhelming.”
MICKE’S SONG:
Oh, please don’t leave me, behind this time
Life isn’t easy, when you drop me from your mind
You know my schedule it’s full as yours
But I’m still waiting for you out of doors
KEITH, VIKTOR, MICKE AND DANIELLA:
“- I don’t think that you can produce love. It’s something that just happens,
you know. If you are just searching for someone to go on a date with, I want to
go on a date with somebody who will never turn up good, so I think it must
come on a natural way.
- It’s always the most exiting when it’s new, I think...
- And when you have passed this exiting feeling, then is the hard point of the
relationship. If you can make it through that point, I think you can be together
the whole life, I think.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08
- The first time, it was like, tension between me and this person, and so it has
been all the other times that I have fallen in love. But the last time I fell in love
it felt like it was more serious, and so that time it was like, I really feel that
there is something here, that, this may be love.
- What is love, Viktor?
- What is love? Yeah! Love is when you look into someone’s eyes and you just
feel it, I think.”
Baby I just need another day, needs to explain
All the miseries that we just passed away
I owe you love so please remain
I’m just trying to alleviate your pain.
“- OK. You’re all going to Music College and you’ve been learning how to write
songs. I wonder if you have any advice, if there is anybody listening to this who
would like to write a love song?
- Just pick up an instrument, or do it acapella, and think about a person, just
shut the door to your room, and just give in to any feelings you get. Try to write
everything down that comes to your mind and then sort it out. Don’t be such a
critic to yourself! I guess, just be nice to yourself, and something will come.
- Believe in yourself, and try to bring the emotions in to the song.
- An idea would be to write down on a paper ten, twenty words about this
person, about this story, that you want to write about. And then take a piano
or a guitar and try to find these words in the instrument, the feeling, and
compare the text to the piano, because that is very important, I think.
ELLIOT:
Micke Bitzarakis, Daniella Dahl and Viktor Sandström talked to our reporter
Keith Foster and they sang their own love songs.
Oliver Bee read Shakespeare's sonnet Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
and Elinor Coleman read the poem Heart we will forget him by Emily Dickinson.
Tove Jonstoij met Stuart Robertson, University teacher in Uppsala. If you want
to know more about Shakespeare we recommend two films you can get on
DVD: Shakespeare in love and Romeo and Juliet, where Leonardo diCaprio plays
Romeo. I am Elliot Broadly. Check out our website, www.ur.se, and look for
The Portal.
K O N T A K T: UR:s Kundtjänst, [email protected]
P R O G R A M N U M M E R: 101083/ra08