A DEFENSE OF POETRY

THE POET SPEAKS

I’ve had a very difficult childhood and I have to say it was poetry that brought me through many difficult days and impossible situations that I can stand here today. From very early in my life, poetry became my very close friend, always there when needed, hugging me, loving me and giving me a voice to speak when I could not speak. Poetry understood my tears, my grief, my pain as well as my laughter and always offered me an ear or a smile. Poetry has helped me get into relationships, deal with break ups, absorb deaths, loss and other feelings. To state plainly, I was abused as a child, and poetry helped me un-bottle all those emotions and feelings that I had bottled up inside from that period of my life.

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I believe poetry is a necessary part of our lives because poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be human, without poetry, the world would be like un-salted, unseasoned food very bland and tasteless. Poetry is art and Art is communication and Communication is essential for life to continue. Another word for communication is intercourse, so the reading and writing of Poetry is very involved with the interplay and dialogue between humans. Poetry allows us to dream, to let off steam, or even express our madness, our regrets, our desires, aspirations and our beliefs.

 We complain and rag about the state of the planet through the voices of our poets because poets are a way of advising the world. Poets are also teachers and doctors and lawyers and waiters and labourers because poets speak for all.  Yes; poets even speak for the dead and poets don't cry they bleed. The fact is, poetry teaches us about life. It say in a fewer words than we can speak, it deliver messages, points of view, comments with words that ignite our mind, our imagination and even reason in some cases. And make us think in a different way, a deeper way than just simply speaking or talking. It has helped me deal with anger, frustration, heartbreak, headache, hopelessness, isolation, depression, and more. It’s helped me be human. That’s the true value of poetry as far as I’m concerned. Everything else is icing.

In the last few years I have spent much of my time writing poetry. Sometimes, while sitting alone in front of my computer, I had sometimes wondered whether I was wasting my time. After all, the world is in trouble, society is falling apart surely there must be something more useful, more pressing, to give my time to than reflecting on poetry?  But that thought did not last long and over the years, I’ve kept writing because I knew, I understood that great poetry has the power to start a fire in a person's life. It can alter the way we see ourselves and can change the way we see the world and if the world will listen, perhaps even change the world.

You may never have read a poem in your life, and yet you can pick up a Walcott, Neruda or Grace Nichols on any page, and suddenly find yourself blown into a world full of awe, dread, wonder, marvel, deep sorrow and joy, poetry does that and more.  It is a magical art, and always has been-a making of language spells designed to open our eyes, open our doors and welcome us into a bigger world, one of possibilities we may never have dared to dream of. Poems honour the unknown, both in us and in the world. They come from an undiscovered country; they are shaped into form by the power of language, and set free to fly with wings of images and metaphor. Imagine a world in which everything is already known. It would be a dead world, no questions, no wonder, and no other possibility. Poetry, above other art form, comes closest to fulfilling the goal of art.

The magic of poetry, is how it uses common everyday speech. It uses words that are known to all of us, but in a sequence and order that surprises us out of our normal speech rhythms and thought processes. Its effect is to illuminate our lives and breathe new life, new seeing, and new tasting into the world we thought we knew. Poetry bids us eat the apple whole, it allows us to smell anger, inhale joy or taste a thought. It opens up our senses, I feel that everything I know about being human has been deepened by the poems I've either written or have read.

Conclusively, like air, like water, like food; I think poetry is also a necessary in our lives. But, Poetry can be dangerous as well as necessary. Because we may never be the same again after reading a poem that happens to speak to our own life directly. I know that when I meet my own life in a great poem, I feel opened, clarified, confirmed somehow in what I sensed was true but had no words for.  Anything that can do this is surely necessary for the fullness of human life hence poetry is very necessary to the world, to society and more directly, very necessary to our daily life.