Featured Poem: A Part of an Ode by Ben Jonson

This week's Featured Poem is a 'quality' choice from The Reader Organisation's Quality Practice Manager Kate McDonnell:

Less than a week to go now to The Reader Organisation’s first Shared Reading Practitioner Day - Speaking Our Own Language - especially for people who have completed Read To Lead, and there are still a few places left As well as featuring special guest Anna Lawrence Pietroni, author of Ruby’s Spoon, the day will be jam-packed with inspirational workshops delivered by Reader staff, including the wonderful Brian Nellist, The Reader Organisation’s Director,  Jane Davis , and Angela Macmillan, editor of the A Little, Aloud anthologies. The event will be held on 20th April at Hope University’s lovely Creative Campus close to Liverpool City Centre and you can find out more information about it on The Reader Organisation’s website.

What better way to spend a spring Saturday than to top up your skills and spend time with like-minded people, full of stories of their experience of delivering shared reading up and down the country – and beyond?

The theme of the day will be quality – how we can recognise and develop it in shared reading practice - and here’s an extract from a Ben Jonson ode where he seems to be saying something helpful and encouraging about the liveliness of quality which somehow makes getting things right seem more do-able!

From A Part of an Ode

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three-hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere.
A lily of a day,
Is fairer far in May,
Although it droop and die that night,
It was the plant and flow'r of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Ben Jonson