By Christian Karlson Stead
Why does poetry matter? Because language is what separates us out from other species, and poetry is the most demanding of all the uses we make of it. Language is the source of our strength, giving us the power to make things better on a world-wide front, and equally to do damage, and even to self-destruct. Poetry uses language – each of our languages – to its fullest potential. That is why it cannot die while the human animal survives – because our humanity, and our sense of what makes us unique, drives us always in that direction, to press words to their limit, the limits of expressiveness, of beauty, of truths real and imagined. Poetry is wisdom but with music; it is truth with magic; it is sense with soul. Poetry unites us, discovers our common ground at the same time that it allows us, and even insists upon, our local truths and realities. It has an ideal quality that brings the best out of us, causes us to strive to improve, to make our world, and our behavior in it, better. People go to wars for religion, for ideology, for conquest. No one goes to war for poetry. Let us celebrate the poet that is somewhere in all of us, the poetry that has been written, and the poetry yet to come.
From my home in the south seas, Aotearoa/New Zealand, I honour and salute this new international poetry movement, which had its beginnings in Medellin and is now spreading in all directions, using the world wide web as its primary conveyance.