We need to talk more about poetry
In my relatively short life, I have moved quite a lot, but wherever I have lived, I have sought out the company of poets. I like hanging out with poets because they pay attention to details, and because they tend to favour slow lives. Poets understand what it means to get enchanted with words, that ‘mixed bodily state of joy and disturbance, a transitory sensuous condition dense and intense enough to stop you in your tracks and toss you onto new terrain and to move you from the actual world to its virtual possibilities’ (Bennet, 2002 p.111, describing “enchantment”). The place that I currently call home is Stavanger, the birthplace of several famous poets, including Alexander Kielland or Sigbjørn Obstfelder. The poets’ presence here nourishes me.
Many people associate Stavanger with the oil industry (especially if they saw the film ‘State of Happiness’), street art or beautiful nature, but not so much as a highly cultured city, Yet, Stavanger is also known for its annual festival of literature ‘Kapittel’ and a strong support for free speech and literary arts. My workshops with local poets prompted me to reflect on the role of poetry in my and others’ lives. Why is poetry vital? What is and what isn’t poetry? How and where to share poems? - those are some of the questions I was asked and here are some of the thoughts I shared.
Poems are quiet and patient creatures, they do not need to be shouted from the rooftops and yet they can touch the deepest corners of a soul. Poems do rarely, if ever, reach masses (and if they do, then they are likely to be prose rather than poetry). Stunning poems can appear in poetry magazines, on social media, scribbled on walls, in calligraphy. Poems can be spoken at live events, or added as voiceover to moving and still images. As a self-identified introvert, I do not enjoy large conversations, so I purposefully choose poetry spaces that are smaller, less noisy and less fast-paced, but that is just my personal preference- there are audiences for all kinds of poems.
Some poems are best not to be shared. There are times when life gets so overwhelming that the only way to survive is to write myself out of it. The lines that come out in those moments are not for anyone else but for me to see. They are wild trolls that want to run free, in a dark gorge, devouring their own perverse origins. I put them on paper and then I destroy them. That process is therapeutic, and it gives me a sense of control over my thoughts. In contrast, the lines that come out in creative moments are for all to see. Those verses long to be shared, and I am just a living pencil etching their meanings into others’ minds.
The beauty of poetry is that it is a rich fodder from which to draw. There are, correspondingly, various kinds of poems. Some contain historical truths and carry political messages and pains inflicted on collectives. Such poems are more likely to resonate with those who judge, commission and publish poems. Some poems are like “the Gorgeous Nothings” that Emily Dickinson wrote on the back of old envelopes. Such pieces might survive beyond the tide of time, as indeed Emily’s verses did.
Poetry can be studied, with courses, workshops and entire schools dedicated to the systematisation of ars poetica. My personal view is that you can study the form, but not the content, of a poem. The content, I believe, can be only studied by living an honest and humble life, glimpsing occasionally its hard-to-articulate truths. The reason why poetry is vital, I think, is because a poem invites resonance in another human mind. For that invitation to be taken in, the written or spoken thoughts need to be formulated in a way that they have a resounding quality. Such quality can be achieved with rhythm and precision, with rich imagery, and sometimes by simply stating what others didn’t dare to articulate.
It strikes me how many (painfully too many), spaces there are within human souls that go unnoticed, unarticulated, unspoken. In comparison with the Universe, the human soul is so small and yet there is so little we know about it. In poetry-writing, you develop a habit of getting intimate with your own soul. The stillness that arrives when you notice the unnoticed and find the words to articulate its truth is indescribable. It is as if you found a nest for a lonely thought after a long pilgrimage, and paid debt to your lack of attention to its perennial presence inside you. That moment of being seen and understood is a uniquely human and humanising moment - and that is the reason why we need to talk more poetry. Not just now, in times of the Covid19 crisis, but consistently. Anything goes in poetry, as long as it is not false. How you behold the inner tissue, or the “inner landscape of the beauty”, as John O’Donohue says, is for you to decide.
