Poetry is not just for poets

National poetry month

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring out through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are--until the poem -- nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.”

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”

from the essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde

Created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, April is national poetry month. As we enter it this year, Audre Lorde’s 1977 essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury” has been reverberating within me. It’s worth reading and reflecting on the full essay from her book “Sister Outsider,” but to summarize, Lorde names poetry as a vital avenue through which women intersect thought and emotion, birthing visions, revelation and transformation from the darkest depths of inner wisdom. While some poetry has grown in popularity via social media platforms, many people still do not read, nor write poetry. Perhaps people think poetry is too sentimental or that it’s not for them as they aren’t creative or good with words, but even though Lorde references women specifically, her notion of poetry makes it accessible to all.

Poetry is not just for the craftsperson that steeps in language, chiseling words with precision and linguistic expertise, but rather, she speaks of “...poetry as revelatory distillation of experience…” In this vein then, we all have poems within us. We all have lives we are living that embody revelations with the potency to fortify collective wisdom. We all can exercise our capacity and power to enter our inner terrain in order to influence the collective imagination about what world we want to see and what is possible.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how some people use AI tools like ChatGPT to write everything. I’m not disparaging anyone from using a tool for support or productivity as relevant, but I’m concerned that we’re relinquishing our capacity to wrestle with, form and articulate our ideas and emotions. Writing is not only an avenue of communication. It is also a process of thinking and clarifying thought, so when we consistently circumvent that process, we’re weakening our voices, and in turn our power. We’re atrophying the muscles that enable us to elucidate what lives within us and share it with others.

In a time in the U.S. where we’ve been slowly slipping into authoritarianism over the years, and in this year, we’re seeing the rapid escalation, our ability to think critically and clearly, to feel deeply and soundly and to articulate that to ourselves and our communities is vital. We cannot afford to leave poetry only to the poets. We must read, think, write and act, each owning our agency to tell our stories and intersect it with that of our national story. We get to write what this country is and isn’t, and we can begin to cultivate our visions through embracing and practicing Lorde’s concept of poetry.

This month, each day via Substack notes I’ll be sharing my own poetry or that of others. If you feel so inclined, join along by reading poetry and / or writing your own poetry and sharing it here or with your community, online or offline. As Lorde states “...it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak and to dare.”