How does poetry shape the answers to our question? | Kateri Lanthier | TEDxAshburyCollege

Canadian poet Kateri Lanthier explores the relevance of the age-old art of poetry in our modern lives.

Kateri Lanthier’s poems have been published in many journals in Canada, the United States and England. Her poem “The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding Cup” won the 2013 Walrus Poetry Prize and was included in Best Canadian Poetry 2014 (Tightrope Books). She is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets and has taught creative writing at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her collected poems are published in Reporting from Night (Iguana Books, 2011) and Siren (Signal Editions, Véhicule Press, 2017).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx.

So who reads poetry anymore?

Along with the death of the novel,
that favorite topic of these papers,

which are themselves
struggling for survival,

poetry's lack of relevance
in the 21st century

seems to be a received idea,
a commonplace,

but that is an idea
that needs to be examined.

In our age of virtual connections,
poetry is thriving:

it lives in pixels and flashes,

and it also lives in song and print
and on subway posters and t-shirts.

It might appear
to be sleeping on bookshelves,

but it's ready to be reanimated

any time someone opens a book
and reads a poem silently or aloud.

Poetry tackles the big questions
in a way that people seem to need,

have always needed,

long before the invention
of the written word,

or much later, of the movable type.

It travels the world in an instant,
and it can change lives.

People still reach for lines of poetry

to quote at major events
or milestones in life -

certainly at the solemn ones,

when we're feeling sad or reverential
or maybe just dutiful,

at funerals or commemorations.

That's when we look to poets
for words to give voice to our grief,

to shine some light
even if we can barely see it.

In times of crisis or in response
to a major turn in history,

poems go viral on social media.

I've seen it happen over and over
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

And then there's joy.

We read or recite lines of poetry
at the happy occasions, the celebrations:

weddings, baptisms,
baby-naming ceremonies.

We're excited, ecstatic,
and we look to poets to give us the words.

Poetry is also political.

Spoken word and performance poets
foreground that;

and George Elliott Clarke,
our current parliamentary poet laureate,

was until recently
the poet laureate of Toronto;

Anna Yin is the poet laureate
of Mississauga, just outside Toronto;

Micheline Maylor
is the poet laureate of Calgary.

We appoint poets

to encourage poetry reading
and writing in their communities,

to speak for cities and entire countries -

and I do recommend their work, by the way.

Poetry takes the long view.

It's an art form that stretches back
before historical records,

and it's also entirely of our moment.

If some song lyrics
could be seen as poetry,

then nearly everyone is enthralled
with this ancient art still.

The Nobel Prize committee certainly thinks
that lyrics are literature.

They gave Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize
for Literature this year.

His win sparked
a huge debate among writers:

Did he deserve this prize?

Sure, he took the name
of a famous poet, Dylan Thomas.

I'll reserve judgment,

but I would observe that the prize

could just as well have gone
to two Canadian singer-songwriters,

in that case, Joni Mitchell
and Leonard Cohen.

But I'll point out that one
of Dylan's most famous songs,

"Blowing in the Wind,"

is a series of questions
with an enigmatic answer,

which is the title.

The song draws on folk poetry

in the manner of Simon
and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair."

That trend was definitely
in the wind at the time.

There's a reason that
nursery rhymes and folk lyrics,

ballads, epic poems, chants and ghazals

have lasted so long.

They fill a human need for patterns
of rhythm, rhyme and silence,

for truths delivered
with a bell-like ring,

for aphorisms,

for romantic desires given expression,

for passing down stories
and religious beliefs,

for mystery, for nonsense and for awe.

The most resonant poetry doesn't flinch
from asking the big questions

and from at least partial
attempts to answer them.

How can I win that person's love?

Why are we here?

Where or what or who
or is there a God or Goddess?

What is war like? How do we define peace?

And yet poems can also be sublime:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Oh, please do. How flattering.

The answer is not what you might expect:

"Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

Wait, what? Wow, that's even better.

"So long lives this,
and this gives life to thee."

Ah, you'll make me immortal
with your poem.

So good poems often subvert
your expectations.

The issue of timelessness can be thorny.

So much depends on
cultural beliefs and assumptions.

Still, even if a poem
isn't always topical or relevant

beyond a particular age or culture,

they do offer something
that we ignore at our peril.

The American poet
William Carlos Williams wrote,

"It is difficult to get
the news from poems,

yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there."

The American poet Emily Dickinson wrote,

"Tell all the truth, but tell it slant."

Poetry's answers might
sometimes be indirect or intuitive,

but they are stronger for their subtlety

and the way they stay open
to interpretation.

I'll tell you my story.

I started writing poems
when I was about eight years old

and kept a journal
in which I scribbled lines.

A couple of years on -

I can date this
to my grade-five classroom -

I wrote a poem that ended with the line

"I feel that my work,
like the world, is recycled."

Deep thoughts for a ten-year-old.

And somewhat funny.

The complaint of feeling
like you're simply repeating

what's been thought
by others and by yourself

goes a long way back in English poetry,

at least to, "Studying inventions fine
her wits to entertain,

oft turning others' leaves
to see if thence would flow

some fresh and fruitful showers
upon my sunburn'd brain,"

which is by Sir Philip Sidney -
the first sonnet in "Astophil and Stella"

in the 1580s.

I stopped writing poetry in my early 30s.

I felt the pressure to earn a living
to be more like a real adult.

I set poetry aside until I
had given birth to my third child.

This kid, Will, seemed to awaken
my dormant poetry brainwaves.

While I was listening
to him acquire language,

colliding images in his attempts
to make sense of the world,

I realized I should be
following him around with a notebook,

and I did.

So phrases he said, such as,

"Moon, moon, help me, I'm stuck,"

and "Am I thinking what I'm thinking?"

made their way into my first book.

I realized with new clarity
that people are born to poetry,

that as children we coin new words
as Shakespeare did.

We seek to articulate,

to understand what's beyond ourselves
and what's going on inside.

We take joy in words; we play with them.

We whisper, shout, sing them,

have to stop someone -
a real grownup - and tell them.

It's an essential human impulse.

Poetry can offer consolation
or provide therapeutic catharsis.

It can redirect our overstimulated
21st-century minds

to focus on essential questions,

consider and reconsider our values
and how we spend our time

and help us appreciate natural beauty.

There are elements of philosophy
and history in many poems,

both contemporary ones
and those in the canon,

and I have a simple suggestion for you:

read some poetry.

I recommend that you read
indigenous poets:

Marilyn Dumont;

Liz Howard, who recently won
the Griffin Award;

Gregory Scofield.

And read the best of English poetry,

read poetry in translation

and the lines will echo in your head.

So if a final big question remains,

What is the role or use of poetry?

I would suggest that the English poet
William Blake supplied the answer

in his Auguries of Innocence:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."