Saying the unsayable: why poetry speaks to us all


Poet Jay Hulme looks at the power of poetry to reach us in ways other literature cannot, and says it is time re-evaluate and reconnect with an art form that has been with us for millennia.


W


HEN people think of


literature, of books, and


reading, the first


thing they generally think of is novels; books written in prose, telling stories. Or perhaps they think of non-fiction, of textbooks, and dictionaries. Few immediately think of plays (aside from Shakespeare), and even fewer think of poetry. Novels are, however, the babies of the literary world. The first novel we know of was written in Japan in the early 1000’s, and the form didn’t really become what we see today until the 1600’s. Plays are older than novels, with theatre as an organised spectacle developing in Ancient Greece somewhere between 600BC and 500BC. Poetry is, again, older. Much older. The oldest written poems ever found are fragments from Ancient Egypt, from around 2500BC or 2400BC, but they’re certainly not the oldest poems. The texts show the skill and technique of a fully realised literary form, because poetry as a genre pre-dates the written word. It began as an oral tradition, a way to share stories, legends, emotions, and even religions between individuals and communities.


That’s something I think we forget, in our modern attempts to box poetry up, and package it neatly into something explainable – poetry is older than writing. Poetry is literally prehistoric.


Saying the unsayable Being a poet myself, and thus someone who tends towards the melodramatic, I often speak of my belief that poetry is part of what makes us human, what defines us as a species, and as individual people. Poetry has lasted thousands of years, because it speaks to us in a way no other way of writing or expression does. Poetry is useful, and beautiful, and far bigger than the small, ill-defined boxes we so often try to place it in. Poetry is the art of saying the unsayable, describing the indescribable, and explaining the unexplainable – so of course it defies our attempts to tame it and categorise it. In fact, it is these attempts that have led to the modern distaste for poetry.


The only way to fit poetry into an easily defined box, is to cut bits off. To define away the difficult bits, like poetry that comes with music, poetry written in foreign languages, poetry written by minorities, or poetry about life experiences that don’t


Jay Hulme (@jayhulmepoet) is an award winning poet, performer, and speaker. He also teaches poetry, performs sensitivity reads, and speaks on transgender rights and inclusion.


suit. The poetic canon is almost all white men, because they are easy to define. When you say “poet”, the image that comes to mind is almost certainly someone tortured and Byronic, or a generic academic from the 1930’s. This incorrect image does immeasurable harm to poetry. Not only does it do a disservice to the breathtaking diversity of modern poetry, but it also erases poetry’s past. The earliest poet we know the name of was


a Sumerian woman who created her complex, and often musical, works over 4,000 years ago. Not white. Not male. Not easily defined.


Ancient and vast


Poetry has always been broad and fluctuating. It is spoken, it is performed, it is read; sometimes it combines with music, sometimes with theatre, sometimes it is even prose. Are you confused as to what poetry is yet? Good. That means you’re closer to understanding what it is than you were before. The only people who think they can define poetry properly, are people who have no idea what it is at all. Poetry has always encompassed far more than any one literary form has any right to. Like smoke, it spreads out, curls back on itself, reaches out further,


Autumn-Winter 2020


(Enheduanna),


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