Sunday, March 06, 2011

Olympics 2012: Tennyson's poem to inspire athletes

Tennyson's Ulysses takes pride of place in the 2012 Olympic Village to give a boost to athletes.
By Martin Chilton, The Telegraph Digital Culture Editor, Mar 2011


Inspirational words from Tennyson's Ulysses have been chosen to take pride of place in the 2012 Olympic Village to give a boost to athletes.

The line "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield", originally written to sum up the determination of the Greek king of legend, triumphed in a competition to find a suitable piece of verse.

Judges saw the triumphant phrase - written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1833 and published nine years later - as a "clarion call".

A panel of experts chose the line after nominations were invited from the public as part of the Winning Words initiative for the Cultural Olympiad.

It will be engraved as a permanent installation in the centre of the Olympic Village where it will be seen by competitors at next year's event and the Paralympic Games. It will also be seen by future generations of residents and schoolchildren who will move into the site.

Broadcaster Dan Snow was among those who nominated the line and said the poem "influenced my approach to school, sport and life - I paraphrased it during team-talks at half time, remembered its words during exams or interviews and repeated it to myself when I felt my courage falter in a mid-Atlantic storm".


Poet Daljit Nagra - who was on the judging panel - said the line was was "succinct, memorable and is a clarion call to the best parts of our searching, inquiring selves that is just as suited to a gold medal winner as it is to the ordinary worker in their daily round".

Also on the judging panel were Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and author Sebastian Faulks.

Other poems have also been chosen for public display around the Olympic Park whose locations will be announced at a later date:

* Andrea Del Sarto by Robert Browning
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"

* Freedom's Plow by Langston Hughes
"First in the heart is the dream.
Then the mind starts seeking a way."

* Variation on a Theme of Rilke by Denise Levertov
"And what I heard was my whole self
Saying and singing what it knew: I can."

* Dignified by Sean O'Brien
"To change the world by mastering a game."

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