Podcast: Gyles Brandreth urges care workers to learn poetry with elderly

Broadcaster and author Gyles Brandreth, the first guest on homecare.co.uk’s new podcast Let's Talk About Care, has urged home care workers to learn poetry with the elderly they care for as he warns: "If you don't use" your brain, "you lose it".

Speaking on Let's Talk About Care, Mr Brandreth revealed that his passion for poems came from his parents. His father always had ‘reams of poetry in his head’ and his mother, who was a teacher, also had a love of poetry. He said: “My mother knew lots of poems and always resented it when some of the care people who came to her home popped in and disappeared almost immediately.

"Then my mother had this idea of persuading this lovely lady from the Philippines to do some poems with her. The lady from the Philippians found English too difficult so my mother said, ‘I’ll recite you a nursery rhyme you will then give me a nursery rhyme in Filipino’. So, my mother could at the end of her life do nursery rhymes in Filipino.

“The point of the story is by having fun together, she and this carer, it became an amusing experience for both of them. So that’s the joy of poetry. Whatever age you are poetry is a way you can make conversation with anyone.

“Everyone else lets you down husbands die, children leave home, the carer you have changes rota. A poem never lets you down. It can be a comforting link from the past; it can be a challenge, it can stretch your vocabulary, it can be an ice breaker, it can be a constellation, it can make you laugh.”

In Gyles Brandreth's new poetry book ‘Dancing by the Light of the Moon’, he shares his thoughts on why poetry is good for the brain, his passion for poetry and how anyone at any age can challenge themselves to learn a poem.

“Anybody can learn two lines in under three minutes, anybody on planet Earth, he says.

“If you learn two lines a day over seven days, within a week you have learned a sonnet. So, a week from today, you could be speaking a Shakespeare sonnet.”

Poetry is good for the brain

Mr Brandreth decided to investigate the benefits of poetry and how it is good for the brain while making a radio programme last year and during his research, he went to see Dame Judy Dench.

He says: “Judy Dench can’t see as well as she used to, so she relies on her memory. I asked her about the first thing she learned as a child and she said ‘Shakespeare’. I found that hard to believe but [Judy Dench] began to rattle off some Shakespeare sonnets and then she said, ‘I could do you today, sitting here in the garden, the whole of a Midsummer Nights’ Dream from beginning to end and the whole of Twelfth Night’.

"She began doing them, she’s 84. I thought this is amazing she is 84 and still learning lines.”

On a visit to Cambridge University Memory Lab, he met Professor Usha Goswami. “Professor Goswami said, 'frankly one of the ways of keeping dementia at bay is to learn poetry by heart.' She said to me, 'look at Judy Dench, look at Maggie Smith, look at Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins, these are all actresses in their late 80’s. They’ve learned their lines by heart.' The truth is if you don’t use it, you will lose it.”

“I learned two lots of things from her. The research showed us that little children that if you recite poems to them, even before they are born, will learn to speak more clearly, they will learn to write better. It’s the reason Judy Dench really could have learnt Shakespeare as a child because of the rhythm.

“It’s like the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare is written in it’s the same beat of your heart. It’s like a nursery rhyme, it’s the rhythm the rhyme helps but it is essentially the rhythm that does it.

“And little children pick up the rhythm of language so that was interesting but what was even more interesting is to do with older people and learning things by heart and essentially it turns out that learning poetry by heart, helps keep your brain alive."

’New brain cells grow as quickly when you are in your seventies as when you are in your twenties’

In his book, he highlights recent research from Columbia University that has shown ‘new brain cells grow as quickly when you are in your seventies as when you are in your twenties’. He says: “The challenge is bringing it to the fore and learning new things."

In the UK, one in six people over the age of 80 have dementia. Mr Brandreth says: “Of course dementia is a tragedy. It’s a challenge and there are medical reasons why some people will develop dementia, so I’m not saying this is a universal answer.

“What I am saying is that the authorities tell us that actively using your brain, learning poetry by heart can give you delight, and pleasure and it can certainly help delay the onset of dementia.”

“If you want to engage the brain, you can’t just sit there gazing at the wall, gazing at the TV screen and expect your mind to be active. It's active engagement and poetry is a fun way of doing that but nobody said it isn’t challenging.”

You can listen to the whole of Episode 1 of Let's Talk About Care with Gyles Brandreth at www.carehome.co.uk/podcast

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