Podcast: Gyles Brandreth says poetry helps ward off dementia

Broadcaster and former MP Gyles Brandreth, carehome.co.uk's first guest on its new podcast Let's Talk About Care, believes learning poetry can delay the onset of dementia, saying "a poem never lets you down. It can be a comforting link from the past; it can be a challenge" and "it can make you laugh”.

With the launch of his new poetry book ‘Dancing by the Light of the Moon’, Mr Brandreth 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.”

Mr Brandreth decided to investigate the benefits of poetry and how it is good for the brain while making a radio programme last year. 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 80s. They’ve learned their lines by heart.' The truth is if you don’t use it, you will lose it.”

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

In his book, he refers to recent research from Columbia University which shows ‘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.

“Lots of care homes have activities for older people. Having people to come and entertain you is fun, but you need to be actively engaged. Having entertainers doing old musical songs [and] can get the audience to sing to them is fun. It’s a trip down memory lane, but the real challenge is not just to revive things you knew once upon a time but to find a short new poem and learn it.”

Mr Brandreth has launched a national campaign called ‘Poetry Together’ involving care homes and schools to contact each other, choose a poem together, practise and recite it. The aim is to get care homes and schools together for ‘National Poetry Day’ on 3 October and up until the end of October.

Hungerford Care Home and Hungerford Primary School have signed up to ‘Poetry Together’ and are currently learning Gyles' favourite poem ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ by Edward Lear for their tea party in early October.

Hungerford Care Home activities coordinator Kanika Sharma has started running a poetry club to prepare for Gyles Brandreth’s poetry project. She said: “We started three weeks ago. We were sitting around the lunch table talking about poetry.

"The first official session was last Friday where I did a little activity by putting the word ‘friendship’ on a flipchart board. I said to the residents what word comes to your mind when you think of friendship? They said words like ‘bond’, ‘warmth’ and ‘happiness’ then we just made two poems out of it.”

’They have taught me a lot about poetry. I now know that poetry does not have to rhyme’

Ms Sharma has noticed that the residents are less passive and more interactive since running her club: “It’s amazing to see the way they are interacting with each other and laughing. The residents are very interactive and have made some new friends. They have taught me a lot about poetry.

"I now know that poetry does not have to rhyme. It was really wonderful so now we are going to carry on with the sessions and it’s going to happen more often.”

Louise Thornton-Allen, Year 5 teacher at Hungerford Primary School said: “They have been learning it two lines at a time and then the next two lines and working through. I enjoy seeing all of the children joining in and enjoying it and working together."

"They are looking forward to working with the residents and doing the poem with them. I think it is definitely beneficial."

The ’Poetry Together’ project has led to a strong bond between the care home and primary school. Ms Sharma said: “It’s made a brilliant link already and I think it would be brilliant if we could carry on with this community link.”

‘You can’t just sit there gazing at the wall, gazing at the TV screen’

Gyles Brandreth believes a good care home is about building community and this is why he believes the ‘Poetry Together’ project works, saying: “Learning a poem together gives a sense of purpose to it. [They’re] not just meeting and sitting there eating a piece of cake and wondering what to say. If you have a poem to learn, you can go through the poem, talk about the poet. It gives you a sense of community, it gives you a purpose of your conversation.

“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.”

In the UK, one in six people over the age of 80 have dementia and 70 per cent of people in care homes have dementia or severe memory problems. Mr Brandreth calls dementia "a tragedy" and says: "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.”

Mr Brandreth’s mother also had a love of poetry. He says: “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 Philippines 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.

’A poem never lets you down’

“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.”

To register your school or care home go to the 'Poetry Together' website www.poetrytogether.com/register.

click here for more details or to contact Hungerford Care Home