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Visual arts accord unique communication shared between work and artist, work and audience, artist and onlooker, and everything in between. Similarly, spoken and written language holds keys to new exchanges. It’s riddled in our everyday conversations, our text messages, phone calls, notes app, and beyond. Some people even string these words into sonnets, lyrics, stanzas, and other poetics. So it begs the question: what is poetry?

Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm —Merriam-Webster

In one sense, poetry is a technology to transform reality. It exists in what’s called the metaxu, which is the realm of the in between. And so, poetry is in between all these things. It’s in between language and music. It's what brings language closer to the condition of music. It’s in between temporal reality and more infinite realities. It is also alert to language’s capacity to create what we know to be true. —Elisabeth Workman (she/her), Writer, Poet, and 51���Ϲ��� Faculty

Poetry is a way of viewing with all of your senses. It is a tool for discernment, for cultivating our truest selves by weeding through small pretenses as we move through the world. It is being in the body and getting out of the body. —Katherine Bockelmann (she/her), Sophomore

Words used or placed in a way that make you feel something a bit larger than everyday speech. —Sam Jamison (they/she), Class of ‘21

Lyrical organized words —Carter Greene (he/him), Junior

Intuition of written language —Bea Morrow (she/her), Junior

Poetry is an easy, creative outlet for people to express and learn about themselves. —Maz Hawj (she/they), Freshman

This past April was National Poetry Month, so I embarked on a mission to hear from poets around our 51���Ϲ��� community, as I find in my own experience, that a writing practice can enhance one’s visual arts practice and vice versa.

Bockelmann, a Drawing and Painting major, shares, “Poetry has helped me to move through the world with my senses engaged in a way I had not experienced previously. It reveals that there is beauty and luminosity even in discomfort, in grief, and allows me to translate these experiences and perspectives into art that I hope to be more powerful than without.”

When I was in elementary school, I had the common experience of thinking poetry was full of rules, and forms, and rhymes; however, the more I explore the world of lyrical language, poetry transcends ordinance and takes many embodiments.

Jamison, whom you can find their poems on Instagram, compares poetry to physical gestures in saying, “I think of painting and poetry as the exact same thing but in different mediums. Sometimes what I'll do is write a poem that comes to me, then take the imagery from that poem and execute it visually. Then, there are two versions of the same expression in different media.”

Another commonly-held question begs, “what should I write about?” Much like poetry itself, the muse behind it manifests itself expansively. Our poets around 51���Ϲ��� share their inspirations as:

“I am inspired by my family, my Hmong culture, and pop culture. In every form of art I create, I am reminding myself, ‘You are a representative of the Hmong community. Do this for us. Do this for your family. Do this for you, and all that you are. What do you want to say? How can you connect with others and make a universal truth?’ I write a lot about time, love, and identity.” - Hawj, filmmaking major

“Photographers Rinko Kawauchi and Uta Barth have been particularly inspirational for me lately with my poetry with their photo narratives centering around poetic explorations/observations of natural light.” - Morrow, photography major

Poetry is not perfect. It’s not intentional to be, but that’s the beauty of it as you keep journeying into the medium. Greene, an illustration major, advises, “Just write. Don't get discouraged because it doesn't sound good, or it isn't how you wanted it to be. It just takes practice and diligence.”

Similarly, poetry is not pretentious and can be transcribed by everyone because it holds the power to influence anyone. Workman, who has written poetry since the third grade with her debut Poetry for All Ages and now teaches 51���Ϲ���’s Introduction to Poetry class, cites, “I do feel like the first draft feels cathartic, but you would get to the other side and you would feel lighter or just like you had gotten through something. I definitely write to stay sane, and when I don’t get to write, I feel off. I feel ungrounded. Writing brings me back to Earth. And with the revision, I do believe there is something very simple just in you singing your song on the roof, and everyone’s singing their own song. Every song is really important.” You can find Workman’s poetry for this year’s National Poetry Month

We all hold the gift of poetry within ourselves, whether it takes the form of a haiku, free verse, slam, or even just how we express ourselves in the way we move about the world: our dancing, creating, playing, crying, etc. I’d like to conclude with a poem by Rumi that Professor Workman so graciously shared with me, that I feel gifts the power of expression and individual heartsong to everyone:

Be Your Note

Remember the lips where wind-breath
originated, and let your note be clear.

Don't try to end it.
Be your note.

I'll show you how it's enough.
Go up on the roof at night
in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs
and sing their notes.

Sing loud! -Rumi

Check out work by our 51���Ϲ��� poets

Additionally here are some poets to check out as recommended by our 51���Ϲ��� poets: