ABSTRACT
One evening my aunt who was in the early stages of dementia started reciting poems at the dinner table: they were poems she had learned many years before as a child and teenager. I asked what reminded her of those poems and her answer was that sitting at the dinner table with my family brought back the memory of safe and happy times at the dinner table with her parents. They were proud of her good grades at school and she was happy to show off what she’d learned. I discussed that happening with her doctor and he said that he would encourage her to keep reciting poetry as a means of keeping her mind working. And this is how it all started: I developed a keen interest in the impact of poetry reading/reciting/memorising (and why not writing it too?) on the wellbeing of people with dementia.
