Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Okay you lovers of English lit...

What do you think about "Wordsworth for the YouTube generation"?

Here's part of the original:
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


Now, it's undergone some change. From the article:

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud has undergone the “rap” treatment in the bicentenary year of its publication to help the next generation of Lake District visitors connect with his work.

The new “hip-hop” version of the famous poem and an accompanying pop video can be listened to and watched for free at Cumbria Tourism’s website at www.golakes.co.uk/wordsworthrap It features MC Nuts in the leading role – better known as Sam - the Lake District Red squirrel mascot for Ullswater Steamers.
The modern re-working manages to stay true to the original sentiment but with some slight variation of the lyrics.

As well as making the works of Wordsworth relevant to a new, younger audience, it also shows how modern-day rap and its clever use of wordplay is a distant relative of poetic rhyming verse.

...“It is a poem about the mind's growing awareness over time of the deepening value of an experience, in this case observing the dancing daffodils. Two hundred years after it was published, the poem is still reaching new audiences and inspiring people. Part of our work here at Grasmere is demonstrating how Wordsworth's poetry is relevant today and encouraging young people to enrich their lives by exploring his poetry in their own ways.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, that wasn't too bad!

Amanda said...

Well, I'm a little biased by being not a fan of Wordsworth, so I think it's kind of a good idea. :)