If they had poetry and rhetoric in ancient Athens they can have medals for slam performances in London, says Fanny Walker
Fanny Walker
There is something historically incomplete about the modern Olympic motto of “citius, altius, fortius” or “faster, higher, stronger”. But in this lies an opportunity for the London Games. The original games of Ancient Greece included an intellectual component of poetry and rhetoric, something the Ancient Romans understood in their ideal of mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a healthy body.
It is time to bring poetry back to the London Games.
Social media is hard to explain to non-participants. Now we have an article from a ‘trusted’ resource, CNN, to which I can point in case anyone asks why I want to meet up and break bread with a bunch of strangers, why I’ve become a Jeff Pulver fan in a matter of months, or why Twitter is worth my time. (not that anyone anyone ever asks me that…)