The Importance of Poetry (1)

Poems are sequences of words that can convey more than the sum of their parts.
Does poetry change anything?
One would think in these days of the creed and cult of the individual, that one individual person’s thoughts put down on paper in the style of poetry would have a great effect on others, to spur them on to better things, like the ubiquitous influencer, but the reverse appears to be the reality.
Those organisations, think tanks, lobbying firms, extreme political parties, NGOs etc. are the ones that dominate the framing of the narrative for large portions of the population, whereas, individual voices struggle to be heard, apart from those faceless managers bleating the party line via the media or corporations, those bland spokespersons for their masters.
So much for original thinking! Where are all the wordsmiths, the Wordsworth’s, the Billy Collins’s or the Mary Olivers, the Walt Whitmans, or even dare I say it, the David Crosby’s?
Where poetry scores and narrative usually does not is in the little (or large) bits of awe they inspire, in the recognition or intersection with some higher plane of understanding, not a god, but perhaps spirituality or magic; definitely thought provoking, a raising aloft out of the everyday morass, by sharing an experience and a comprehension; triggering some morsel of enlightenment and offering a new way to live, think and move on.
Ideological framing does not achieve this; once accepted, a status quo of ideological thought is required, therefore, no moving on, just an intransigence of ideas to stifle the intellect, to arrest development, to make common sense the comatose Soma of the masses. One cannot move on without changing the message, so ideology is like cement.
Perhaps poets are closet anarchists? Maybe there is something of the old blacksmithing about them, annealing words like metal, shaping forms from shapeless elements, to magically create something new from a base metal alphabet. Poetry promotes a different way of seeing things, sparking unknown (until now) emotions, and signposts to new horizons.
Framing narrative produces none of this creativity, framing narratives is just telling us how we should think or behave, thus is originality dissuaded and conformity is king.
We are encouraged to act like this because we believe the class above us, the manager, the CEO, the government minister, the priests are our intellectual betters (because otherwise however did they reach their elevated positions, Oh! Yes, meritocracy, I forgot) telling us to follow them to the promised land (and we all know where that leads after 2000 years of religious strife), they have the answers and we follow them like the Pied Piper, believing their shaky facades, whilst they pocket the profits.
Except the façade is dropping, they no longer feel the need to keep their grubby little schemes a secret from us (perhaps they feel they have enough of us onside now). They hide in plain sight and their sheep comply; following on like ‘One man’ (read Trump and Musk) and ‘His Dog’ (read the middle classes) collecting the rest of us as lambs to the slaughter.
So where does the dance of words get us, will it change us, will we take it into battle, will we write ‘desperate poetry’ as Frank Turner (2011) acknowledges, as counsel to combat mental plight.
The importance of poetry –
1. Poetry can be transformative through reclaiming our attention away from ephemera and towards important self-realisation and concentration on inherent meaning i.e., not just what it says on the tin, but what is actually in the tin. Carey (2005) suggests literature is a bank of ideas to expand our horizons. Poetry has something of a snob value which is unfair; people who critique and tell us what we should like and what is good for us are not the gatekeepers of our taste, if nobody understands a poem it is probably because the meaning was always incomprehensible, it is not that their taste is superior.
2. Poems are used where description and essay are inadequate to explain meaning, poems excel in meaning-making through metaphor, and at best they dig into our archetypes, our primary concerns and find the well-spring of emotion.
3. Although sales figures of poetry appear to be increasing and it features well on social media for free, ironically a lot of the content of poetry is the rejection of materialism e.g. the Romanticism or Transcendentalism. Our chatter today is mostly in the language of materialism, it structures our sentences and socializes our children to the detriment of entry to all the other worlds that are out there.
4. Thomas Berry (1999) states that creativity is born of the wild and the insights are down to the disciplined energies of the universe through the telling skill and insight of the artist who can become almost shaman-like, by entering the world of the story with an emotional intensity; the wild never rests and it is this restlessness that nurtures creativity, Berry sees the status quo as an obstacle to originality.
5. According to Carey (2005) art emphasizes belonging, and for the masses it is an aesthetic experience, and possibly for some, one of awe and can also be a guiding hand in their lives to change direction, to live fuller lives and to affect others by their enthusiasm and inspiration. Perhaps poetry can also improve us morally because it contains parables?
6. Most poetry is topical even if it harks back nostalgically to the past, because it looks back through the eyes of the present. It is not trying to set an age in stone because it constantly evolves, especially with the new generation of multi-ethnic poets and the poetry Slam. Consequently, the past is always being revised, myths and old motifs reworked with engrafted superstitious fragments (Clare, 1983 cited in Lupton, 2022 p.5), descriptions re-bound with new metaphors and new glimpses of truth which hopefully inspire the future.
7. For whatever reason art is important otherwise why would we go to extreme lengths to protect it in war time? One reason for this besides its priceless qualities, is that according to Carey (2005) poetry itself is not passive but always engaging, it has worth and endurance beyond money. Art makes us feel in an age of anomie and apathy because of the overwhelming problems of our time.
Joseph Brodsky said ‘by failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan’.

References –
Berry, T. (1999) The Great Work, Bell Tower, New York.
Brodsky, J. (1991) Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10854648-by-failing-to-read-or-listen-to-poets-society-dooms (Accessed: 4th Sept. 2026).
Carey J. (2005) What Good are the Arts? London, Faber and Faber.
Lupton, H. (2022) The Dreaming of Place, Norwich, Propolis.
Turner, F. (2011) ‘I Still Believe’ from England Keep My Bones [CD/Streaming album]. London: Xtra Mile Recordings.