A place for the poetry of the human being and the world – from page poetry, to poetic social processes, to a poetic re-imagining of the entire social organism (including economics, politics and culture, as well as how these three spheres interact). A place where the human being, the world and all we do can become poetic.
SO WHAT IS SOCIAL POETRY?
To the question ‘What is Social Poetry?’ we can say that, from one direction, it is the attempt at a phenomenological process whereby the imagination (individual or collective) is able to perceive an image of an objective social reality (current and emerging) and then express this through the word, be it in written or oral form.
Whereas philosophy aims at the perception of new ideas and thoughts, poetics has to do with the perception of new images. When perceived, we can express these images/pictures as metaphors through the word. Social Poetry has to do with this process in terms of individual imaginative perception but also collective imaginative perception. The imagination, in this way, is therefore treated as an “organ of perception” (Goethe).
By ‘painting with words’ the images we perceive, and by trusting and staying with the images themselves, we are better able to perceive and express the current social reality. The poetic images we create can contain a great deal of perceived data – ‘an image contains a thousand words’ is also true of poetic images. By then seeing where images wish to lead us – or how they wish to continue – we can also learn more about future, potential or emerging reality.
In this way, Social Poetry can also be seen as a research methodology – one that is able to perceive as well as articulate social realities that are often difficult to observe and articulate in other ways, especially given the often overwhelming and ‘scattered’ amount of data contained in social systems.
Centre for Social Poetry 