To remember why we started

An Interview with Edna Moross

Though the Napkin Poetry Review has focused on how poetry intersects with research and data, we also want to look behind the numbers to remember why we fell in love with poetry to begin with. In this interview, we speak to Edna Moross about how poetry has been an inspiration throughout her life. “Poetry is a medium that captures all aspects of being human,” she tells us. Through her Instagram platform Edna’s Choice (@ednaschoice), which was started during the pandemic, she has offered people moments of stillness by reading her favorite poems. Here, she shares with us some of those favorites and gives insight into questions like how does poetry interact with music? What role might poetry have against a culture of cynicism? How can poetry become a source of healing?

“I am Edna and I will share pieces of literature that I love,” you say on your Instagram account, Edna’s Choice (@ednaschoice). This sentence captures both the simplicity and joy of this page that has shared videos of you reading from your favorite pieces of literature, especially poems, throughout the pandemic. What inspired you to begin this platform?

I have had a love of poetry since I was a child. I enjoyed performing in school plays and was encouraged to read Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists by an inspiring English teacher at my school in London on my return from evacuation during the war. She directed productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Alcestis of Euripides, which was an exciting experience. There, I discovered that the written word and its form on the page was as intriguing as the spoken word. She suggested that I should try to work on radio if possible, believing I had the voice for it. 

After three years studying drama and speech training, I became a professional actress, performing on stage and in radio plays, simultaneously reading poetry for many years which I enjoyed immensely.

Edna’s Choice was an idea encouraged by my children and grandchildren, particularly after I had contributed some readings to my granddaughter Sophie Siem’s Intuition School which she posted online. Charlie Siem, my grandson by my daughter, Karen, was enthusiastic and helped me enormously, photographing and virtually producing my readings, inviting me to read while he would play his violin. Their youngest sister Louisa, who is a visual artist, has also been most helpful in the process of filming and interpreting texts. I’ve found this collaboration with my grandchildren exciting and rewarding. 

Poetry is a medium that captures all aspects of being human. When one looks at a poem on the page it is a visual experience, which combined with the word becomes a spiritual experience. Seeing poems by Emily Dickinson on the page with her unusual punctuation is as important as speaking them. It’s wonderful listening to poets read their own work, and hearing a poem being read or performed well is fulfilling as the words come alive. I believe the reading by Richard Burton of “Under Milk Wood” by Dylan Thomas is so moving that it surpasses any other reading of this supreme work. 

Ted Hughes expressed the meaning of poetry eloquently: “Poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential, as well as the healing benevolence that used to be the privilege of the gods.”

To introduce your reading series, you share this quote by Oscar Wilde: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Could you tell us more about how poetry might counter cynicism, especially in today’s product-driven world?

Poetry counters cynicism as anyone who has an interest or inclination can access this medium of communication. For people who enjoy poetry, it becomes an equaliser. One could describe it as a democratic art form. In today’s product-driven world, poetry can become a solace as well as an inspiration. Cynicism has been addressed by many poets, ancient and modern. Oscar Wilde, for example, was a master, as well as W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot and countless others. 

What have been some of the most memorable poems you’ve read for Edna’s Choice? How did you choose poems that might provide solace or wisdom to people during this time?

Memorable poems!  There are so many that have touched, moved and remained with me over all the years that I’ve been reading them. I’ll name but a few. ‘Everyone Sang’ by Siegfried Sassoon, the brilliant WW1 poet who expressed the pain of war through a visual experience, using birds finding freedom; one can almost hear their glorious sound with his poetic words.

Emily Dickinson’s ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking’ and ‘Tell all the Truth but tell it slant...’ are only two of the amazing oeuvre that she produced during her short life. 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘The Nearness of the Beloved.‘ An exquisite love poem, expressing loneliness which so many are suffering from today. Similarly ‘Reared as we are in quiet and in peace...’ could be about now, not just the 18th century. 

I try to select poems that are relevant to the moment and sentiment that I believe listeners will respond to, and that I hope will provide some solace and wisdom during these difficult days. 

Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ has been one of my favourite poems since I first encountered poetry so many years ago, and it never fails to deliver its message and enchant me.  

As for love poems, I think of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with ‘How do I love thee?’ The Persian poet Jalal-Ud-Din-Rumi expressed eternal love with his exquisite poem ‘You and I.”’ Sylvia Plath was able to vent her pain and disillusion with wonderful words, as did Anna Akhmatova. I haven’t yet read their poems on Edna’s Choice, however. There are so many beautiful, cynical, amusing and clever poems waiting to be enjoyed by the audience to be read by me or others who love speaking poetry as much `as I do. 

We’ve also enjoyed videos of you alongside your grandson, Charlie Siem, on the violin. How do you understand the connection between poetry and music?

Poetry and music have been entwined over the centuries. The Chorus in many Greek tragedies was sung. Opera is virtually poetry set to music. Poets have written often about music and its power. ‘A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day’ composed by John Dryden in 1687 is an exquisite example, saying, “From harmony from Heav’nly Harmony, This Universal frame began.”

As Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, “Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory”. Shakespeare used music in many of his plays to evoke a mood and enhance a scene, whether played on a lute or sung. 

The sonic vibrations produced in music can heighten the meaning of the words. The shared experience can be powerful. Music has been a part of my life since I was a baby remembering the lullabies and songs my mother would sing as I was growing up. I grew to appreciate all aspects of the art form, even though I never managed to master an instrument. I’m fortunate that my daughter and some of my grandchildren have learned to play various instruments which provides me much pleasure. I have enjoyed reading poetry accompanied by my grandson, Charlie Siem. His sister, Sasha is a poet and composer so I’m truly surrounded by these art forms.

Has your relationship to poetry, as both a pastime and a source of growth and inspiration, changed throughout your life? 

With the influence of the internet and social media, I believe more people have become aware of the intense pleasure that poetry can impart; of the advantages of this new world of technology. The changes that I have witnessed as I’ve grown older are manifest…not all good, I’m afraid, but one learns to live with and take advantage of them. I’m amazed that so many people watch and respond to Edna’s Choice, which is rewarding, and which I appreciate enormously. Without Instagram it would never have happened!