Poetry almost always comes from an urgency, from a deep need to express and communicate something about the human condition, or at least, about our human condition. Perhaps it is something we are passionate about; some injustice we are angry about, some fear we are despairing about, some idea we are trying out; some hope, some dream, some joy, some hurt. We can do this in prose, of course, but poetry - either our own or that of others – touches us in a different way. The Welsh Quaker pacifist and socialist Waldo Williams interrogates the human condition:
What is it to be human?
What is living? Finding a great hall
Inside a cell.
What is knowing? One root
To all the branches.
What is believing? Holding out
Until relief comes.
And forgiving? Crawling through thorns
To the side of an old foe…
(1)
Poetry is often thought of as a solitary art form. But in reality, it is more accurate to describe poetry as involving the interplay of solitude and community, of being alone and being with others. We may belong to a writers’ group; there are many of these, by no means all for professional writers, often local community groups. We may be writing in the context of a campaign or struggle, and therefore engaging with others as to the content and purpose of the writing. If we are writing performance poetry, then we are writing specifically for others and often will be writing with others, for theatre is, of all the arts, the most collaborative. We may be writing for worship or to explore in a new way the meaning that biblical or other religious texts have for us. There are many contexts in which poetry is a corporate activity.
And even where we are writing alone, our writing is shaped by our context; by our relationships, conversations, experiences, explorations. We are none of us sufficient unto ourselves, we are affected by others, and that shows up in our writing. As in all of life, in poetry we struggle to find the balance between community and solitude.
We don’t always get it right, but at its best, this tension is a creative one.
The power of words has always been recognised in political change and struggles for justice. The poet, the playwright, the journalist, have all been on the front line of liberation movements, for example, and are often the first to be imprisoned or otherwise silenced. They are dangerous because they question received wisdom, they present an alternative truth, they are nonconformists and dissenters. The Methodist poet Jan Sutch Pickard writes after her arrest for protesting against nuclear weapons:
At the gates
We shared Communion at the gates of Faslane:
one of the places in a broken world
where breaking bread and drinking bitter wine
is most relevant.
We shared it to remember
security – not of barbed wire and missiles –
but of God’s love
that risks all and gives life.
We shared, in a warm circle of believers.
But later, when we sat down on the cold road,
we found that the bread and the cup
had escaped, and were still out there in the crowd,
being shared, carefully, among people of all kinds:
this paradox
of pain and promise
being passed from hand to hand
in a broken world.
When people experience marginalisation and silencing, finding their own voices again is not just an act of resistance, it is an act of insistence. It is a way of stating, ‘you cannot continue to ignore and overlook us. We will be heard.’ And remarkably often, it is in poetry that people find their voices.
Kathy Galloway
1. Waldo Williams, “Pa Beth yw Dyn’ 1952 from Dail Pren, 1956
2. Jan Sutch Pickard, ‘At the Gates’ from ‘Faslane 2002’, in Out of Iona, 2003, Wild Goose Publications