Nine Nights' Love: The Concept

And he made love to lovely-haired Mnemosyne, what is more:
To him the thrice three Muses, golden-filleted, she bore—
Festivity is their delight and pleasure in the song.
(Theogony ll. 915-17)

According to Hesiod, before Zeus became the ruler of Olympus, he spent nine nights in Pieria. Each night he lay with Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, and each night Mnemosyne conceived: a year later, in an event that would become one of the most celebrated in poetical history, the Muses were born.

Little is known about Mnemosyne, and less about why Zeus lingered so long in her company. Could they have known what they were making together? Did they speak of it? Nine Nights’ Love is a verse recital program that attempts to reconstruct their interactions. Through a series of nine pillow-talk dialogues, each compiled from lyric poems and extracts, the humours, moods, passions, and exclamations of the lovers will be examined at the exact moment each art was engendered.

The dialogues will be approximately 10 minutes each, and their texts will be drawn from the verse and verse drama of the 17th century (with special attention paid to love poetry). Because independent poems will be delivered as if part of a conversation, each dialogue will give participants the opportunity to practice both formal recitation as well as some stage and gesture work.

My motivation for designing and directing this recital program is, first, to provide a local venue for the public performance of English verse. While London and UWO both have strong performance poetry communities, their shared focus on original works means there are few opportunities to hear classical non-dramatic texts performed aloud. Second, I feel it would be exciting to carry the momentum gained by our department’s summer and fall performances forward into the winter. Third, and ultimately, I would like to work towards making public verse recitals a recurring event at Western (if on a smaller scale than that of Nine Nights’ Love). I think regular recitals of poetry would provide students with a wonderful opportunity to memorize texts they cherish, and to gain performance experience.