LifeWords Recitation Showcase: Ruby Liles Explores “the Importance of Being Ugly” With Hearst’s “The Blobfish: A Short Poem”

Students of LifeWords Readings Circles recently took part in this semester’s Recitation Showcase, where they shared pieces of literature that are meaningful to them or that have impacted them somehow. LifeWords staff was on hand to record these performances, making them available for family and friends and saving them for posterity . Indeed, we think of these performances as a literary legacy, as memorializing a part of ourselves we don’t often share.

Congrats to this semester’s participants. We are so proud of all you’ve accomplished this semester!

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Sherrill Hills resident Ruby Liles chose to recite Michael Hearst’s humorous poem “The Blobfish: A short Poem,” which appears in his book Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth’s Strangest Animals (2012). Ruby learned of the creature while reading the recent Smithsonian article “In Defense of the Blobfish: Why the ‘World’s Ugliest Animal’ Isn’t as Ugly as You Think It Is.”

Ever one for the unexpected, Ruby selected this poem for its novelty and its focus on “the importance of being ugly.”

Watch her recitation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhaB3P9lPgc&list=PLav1Og9ouiWDH0YuzhEPOrlI9pDIdkAQn&index=1

See other performances:

Jan Smalley Connects the Syrian Refugee Crisis With Markham’s “The Man With the Hoe”

Shirley Lipa Presents Cherished Book of Poems