I have an uncle who used to sing the craziest (and often off-color songs).

He was a WWII vet and looked like the Canadian actor Lorne Greene. He would rip out the kinds of songs that sailors sang and I would rush to write down the lyrics so I could learn them.

And learn them I did.

The hard way.

It was irritating and frustrating.

Even though they say the hand builds the mind and it wasn’t the end of the world that I spent so much time writing them down and rewriting them, I was still relying on rote learning.

If only I knew then what I know today about memory techniques!

You see, I now memorize and regularly demonstrate poems I’ve committed to memory almost every month during my live memory training bootcamps.

I’ve memorized everything from ancient Sanskrit poems to some of the most inventive contemporary poetry.

And today I’m going to share a few case studies and key tips I know you’re going to love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUQYVUEBJVc

How to Memorize Poetry Fast

The fastest way I know to memorize poetry involves a combination of ancient memory techniques.

These are:

The Memory Palace Technique
Alphabetical association
Numerical association (where relevant)
Spaced repetition based on solid active recall principles

Now, I know that weaving together so many memory techniques to memorize poetry or even song lyrics, sounds like a lot. But if you want to memorize poems fast, stick with me. Bringing all of these strategies together is much easier than it might seem at first glance.

But first, let me further demonstrate that I actually do successfully memorize poetry to bolster the demonstrations given in the video tutorial above. I believe proof is important because there are a lot of people out there who talk about skills they cannot do.

In the case of mnemonics, there are even entire forums filled with people giving advice about memory techniques when they clearly haven’t lifted a finger to memorize a poem. That, or they’ve used rote memorization and are only pretending they used mnemonics.

So with those issues in mind, here are a few more videos with demonstrations from a variety of verses in various states of retention. Please be sure to watch each example because I will refer back to these recitations to help you rapidly memorize poems of your own.

Example One: A Univocalic Poem

In this video, you’ll see me at the Memory Palace Bookshop I’m developing practicing the recitation of a univocalic poem by Christian Bök:

https://youtube.com/shorts/b6oFIOnAwng?feature=share

That’s from a fantastic book of poetry called Eunoia.

Example Two: Shakespeare

This video not only shows me reciting lines from Titus Andronicus. It includes a very important teaching point.

That’s because I also demonstrate reciting the lines forward and backward to help teach you how to more easily commit even the most difficult poem to memory using a process I call Recall Rehearsal:

https://youtu.be/nhjIkGu32CA?si=s6gIJz6Poq9Zpo6C&t=1380

Now, I regularly memorize Shakespeare.

But in the case of the example shared in the video above, I had a special purpose in mind.

I was doing it to reproduce the memory technique Anthony Hopkins describes in his autobiography. Here’s the full case study.

Example Three: Song Lyrics

In this video, you’ll see and hear me singing a famous song called The Moon Represents My Heart in Chinese:

https://youtu.be/dCyPV6qfKkI

The entire song took just over forty minutes to commit to long-term memory.

Even though it’s been a few years since I sang the whole song, I still remember most of the lyrics to this day. Every once and awhile, I whip it out and it always brings a smile to my wife’s face.

The reason this Chinese poem set to music took a bit longer to memorize other poems I’ve memorized is because it’s in a foreign language that I was only just beginning to study at the time.

Example Four: Poetry Quoted in a Speech

When I wrote my TEDx Talk, I incorporated lines from a Sanskrit piece called the Ribhu Gita.

This was an interesting challenge because it called me to recall the speech and the poetry that had already been memorized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvtYjdriSpM

This particular performance was a lot of fun, but also challenging due to the combination of a live audience, cameras and the fact that the world was starting to go into lockdown at the beginning of Covid.

I had a lot on my mind, but thanks to the memory techniques you’re about to discover, I still think the talk came off fairly well. It’s been seen over four million times now, so I must have done something right.

Example Five: Real-Time Poetry Memorization

If you want to see me memorize in real time, check out this discussion with Guru Viking.

Steve, the host, throws Shakespeare at me and I memorize a few lines and discuss how I did it in real time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J62IN_ngYH0

Now let’s get into the steps, many of which come directly from my premium course on memorizing poetry.

Step one: Use the Memory Palace Technique

A Memory Palace is essential for memorizing poetry, or anything verbatim.

What is this technique?

A Memory Palace is a mental recreation of a familiar location.

For example, in the first video example above from the poem Eunoia, I used my mom’s home from where she lived years ago.

I moved from the master bedroom to the kitchen and living room, to a few other bedrooms and finally out the door and down the driveway in front of the house.

How to Memorize a Poem in an Hour (or Less) Using This Technique

Using the method of loci, you place mnemonic images along a mental journey.

As I just mentioned, I started in one room, then moved to the kitchen, the living room, and so forth. On each corner and wall, I placed an association.

For example, for the line, “Awkward grammar appals a craftsman,” I placed an image of Apollinaire in a state of awe changing into being appalled.

Now, what exactly it means to “place” an association along a journey in an imaginary version of a building can feel a bit abstract in the beginning.

But basically, you’re taking a corner, a wall or a piece of furniture and elaborating it with strange, exaggerated ideas and feelings that remind you of each word of the poem or song lyric.

You can do it in any language and if you look at the Guru Viking video above, you’ll see me demonstrate exactly how and why it works in any language. In that particular example, I use the wall behind me for Shakespeare in the same way I memorize Sanskrit phrases when memorizing ancient mantras.

To Speed Up The Process When You’re Just Starting Out, Do This

Learning to use the Memory Palace technique can feel challengi...