Skip to main content

Evelyn Glennie: a tribute from a student

 Yesterday I presented in this space one of Maggie's students whose project work deserved a wider visibility. Let me present one more student from the same grade who paid a poetic tribute to Evelyn Glennie after learning a lesson about the musician. 

Evelyn Glennie carried music in her body. She has been profoundly deaf since the age of 12. Now she is 56. She learnt to play musical instruments after she became deaf. She says that she taught herself to listen with parts of her body instead of ears. She gives over 100 concerts a year. She enthralls thousands of people with her breathtaking performance with various instruments. She teaches music. Recently she was also named as the Chancellor of Robert Gordon University in Scotland, her country. 

Irene Sara Sam
Irene Sara Sam, a grade 9 student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala chose to pay a poetic tribute to Evelyn for her project in English. It is her teacher who drew my attention to the work so well-composed and well-presented. The profundity of thoughts in the verse is striking too, considering the fact that it comes from a 14-year-old. 

The very opening of the poem reveals Irene's great potential as a writer. Observe the drama in the opening stanza: a 17-year-old girl from a Scottish farm standing on a railway platform feeling the vibrations of approaching trains in her body. Sounds entered into that girl's body, not her ears. And then the poem goes on to present her struggles and achievements before concluding with a look at "the beauty of her heart". The exquisite rhyme scheme that Irene has employed didn't escape my notice either. 

Evelyn Glennie

Allow me to present Irene's entire poem here just the way she presented it to her teacher. 







zXz

Comments

  1. Jeriel Roy September 2, 2021 at 3:31 PM

    Beautiful work Irene! Your creative mind is so visible in the lines. The rhyming scheme is lovely..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 2, 2021 at 6:31 PM

    Hari OM
    Well, I didn't think Femi's offering could be topped, but my word... of course I am little bit biased, EG being a fellow Scot and that too, one I have had the great privilege of hearing in live concert on a couple of occasions. Irene has definitely caught the essence of Evelyn's character and determination. Please do again pass on my admiration... and thank YOU, Tomichan, for sharing these with us! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 2, 2021 at 6:38 PM

      Yamini, you're doing to me what I'm trying to do to these young students:appreciate and support goodness in these bad days. I'll surely convey your admiration to Irene through her teacher.

      Delete
  3. Ravish ManiSeptember 3, 2021 at 1:10 AM

    Loved Irene's poem, sketch, as well as handwriting. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rajeev MoothedathSeptember 6, 2021 at 11:03 PM

    She has not only written a good poem but presented it so artistically!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Preeti ChauhanJune 9, 2023 at 7:21 PM

    Great work Irene and Matheikal !

    ReplyDelete
  6. DawnanddewJune 12, 2023 at 1:26 AM

    Surely a prodigy Irene, you are! Your work has landed in the right hands that uplift genuine souls ! Your work compells me to reach it to the hands of my creative young friends of class ix where I just completed teaching this lesson on Evelyn. It is a nicely crafted piece! Thanks to your English teacher who is a creative and caring mentor of all budding blossoms like you. Keep writing. Best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  7. DawnanddewJune 12, 2023 at 1:30 AM

    To continue with my words, the miniature awards and sketches have been created by you so aptly for illustration. You will surely go places! My heartfelt best wishes!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...
6 comments
Read more

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...
10 comments
Read more