When presenting, you may know your message well, but your audience doesn’t.  You have to teach them. That means repeat your core idea at least three times

I wrote this little poem about it to help you remember:

When you’ve a message
you want all to recall
but, the listener’s
tired and distracted.
Don’t worry, my dear,
repetition’s your friend!
Repeating is where you get traction.

Plant the seed.
Lay the message out once.
Yes, you could even try spelling.
But, the message is risked
if it’s not fixed
in the anchoring soil of re-telling.

So, repeat it,
then say it again.
Your audience isn’t a know-it-all.
Repeating mitigates
all the dissipates.
Repeat puts the ‘all’ in recalling.

I know what you’re thinking.
Du-du-duplicating
can’t possibly fix all the blanking.
But, trust me, my friend,
when the goal is retrieving …
nothing beats the art of repeating!

NaPoWriMo is National Poetry Writing Month. Participants commit to write a poem a day and publish it in the WordPress community. Christie wrote this poem for the 2014 NaPoWriMo challenge to write a poem with the word ‘repeating’.