How Poems Make Things Happen single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 How Poems Make Things Happen
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'Can poetry make things happen? Can poetry bring about change? Does it hold that power? In the wake of the heaving 2020 chronicle of civil rights protests, a global pandemic and environmental disasters, what role can poetry play towards a recovering world? While we – poets, non-poets, regular and irregular poetry readers alike – often turn to poetry in the face of grief, trauma, depression or injustice, is this ‘turning to’ the poem merely borne of tradition, in that we call upon poetry for its ability to speak through inarticulable depths of feeling? Or, do we intuitively sense that part of poetry’s purpose is to provoke or invoke change?' (Introduction)

Notes

  • Epigraph: It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there.

    William Carlos Williams ‘Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

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Last amended 17 May 2021 09:29:05
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