Why is poetry important?
I was recently at the launch of Textile magazine, a new literature and culture mag based in Kitchener, and the readers for the night were almost all new writers. There was so much poetry was offered passionately, without apology, with a love for the form’s stretch and give. Fantastic to see and hear!
Poetry is important because it is inherently unreasonable, in the sense that it uses language differently than prose does and because poetry demands a different kind of attention, whether you are reading it or writing it. Poetry asks that readers or listeners think of this language as magnified (or amplified or stripped-down or voluble) or otherwise made noticeably different from everyday speech. And since it sounds and looks different, it can also challenge norms of all kinds. Prose can do this as well – in fact, it’d better! – but poetry attracts people with its strangeness. That’s really necessary, especially in smaller communities or places where people need to find what can be life-changing solidarity in all forms of artistic making.
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