May Poetry Culture the Humans!
World
Poetry Day 2023 / 21 March / Article
May Poetry Culture the
Humans!
Fr Dr M. D. Thomas
Director, Institute of
Harmony and Peace Studies, New Delhi
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‘World Poetry Day’ is being
celebrated on the 21st day of March. This day was declared in 1999,
by UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in
its 30th General Conference in Paris. The celebration is geared
towards recognizing poetry as one of the most treasured forms of cultural
identity as well as linguistic expression of the humans.
‘Supporting linguistic
diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for
endangered languages’ was the purpose of the day. The objective of the day
includes also ‘promoting the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of
poetry throughout the world as well as giving fresh recognition and impetus to
national, regional and international poetry movements’.
Tradition has it that
‘poets’ day’ was celebrated along with the birthday of Virgil, the Roman epic
poet, on the 15 of October. The United Kingdom celebrates it on the first
Thursday of October, or even in November. The 2021 World Poetry Day on 21 March
witnessed the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Blaze
Koneski, the great Macedonian poet, writer, translator and scholar, in
Paris.
World Poetry Day is
celebrated by schools, colleges, organizations, publishers and poets from
across the languages, all over the world. Poets come together to read poetry,
in view of honouring the day, along with fostering awareness among the public.
Educational institutions conduct poetry competitions for their students, as
well.
World Poetry Day is an
occasion for promoting the reading, writing and teaching of poetry, for
reviving oral traditions of poetry recitals, for honouring poets and for
instilling the tradition in newer generations. It is also an opportunity for
fostering the convergence between poetry and other arts, like theatre, music,
dance, painting and writing and thus for raising the visibility of poetry in
the media.
Poetry is a form of art and
literature. It is a beautiful blend of culture, history and study. Poetry is a
form of language that is understood by all, even if one does not speak the language.
It is an art form, which inspires everyone and facilitates change of perception
towards life. From that point of view, poetry is the most powerful means of
teaching.
Poetry is arranged in words.
It is coloured with images. It is struck with the right metre. Therefore,
poetry has no match. It is an intimate form of expression that opens to others.
Poetry enriches mutual interaction and relations among the humans. It is the
best means for harmonious living and human progress. It is all the more
necessary in troubled times of human history.
Poetry is a beautiful and
unique form of expression. No other type of literature creates such an
abundance of feelings and emotions as poetry. The ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is
believed to be the earliest poetry, some 2000 years BC. But, poetry is likely
to have existed even before the existence of literacy.
Poetry uses rhythms and
imagery to elicit emotion and the imagination of the reader. Poetry employs
rhyme, in line with metres and short syllables, except ‘free verses’. Poems are
broken into stanzas, which are like paragraphs, and can be up to 12 lines long.
Today, countless types of poems are available, not only in diverse languages, but
also in the same language.
The core purpose of poetry
is to explore the human condition and to invoke emotion though words,
critically so. It digs up ideas from deep within and resonates with the
existential dilemmas of the humankind. Poetry is a linguistic expression that
people of all cultures can identify with.
Poetry is a literary work,
in which the expression of feelings and ideas is intense by the use of
distinctive style and rhythm. Poetry is a collection of poems. It is a genre of
literature. The quality of beauty and intensity of emotion is characteristic of
poetry. Poetry is also called verse. A few of the synonyms of the word ‘poetry’
are – rhyme, metrical composition and rhythmical composition.
Besides, poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language, such as phonasthetics, sound symbolism and metre, in view of evoking meanings in addition to prosaic professed meaning.
Geoffrey Chaucer was an
English poet of the 14th century, best known for ‘The Canterbury
Tales’. He has been called the ‘father of English literature’ or ‘father of
English poetry’. Some of the oldest known poems are ‘the Rig Vedas, the Epic of
Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Song of the Weaver and they are anonymous. The
Psalms and the Illiad are attributed to David and Homer, respectively, but
their certainty is still debated.
In the words of William
Wordsworth, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes
its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. Khalil Gibran says,
“Poetry is a deal of joy, pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary”.
Charles Baudelaire exhorts, “Always be a poet, even in prose!”
Further, poetry is one of
the most esteemed heritages of the entire human society. It is characteristic
of all cultures, nations and continents. It is practiced all throughout
history. Poetry, for sure, speaks to our shared values and common humanity.
Poetry transforms the simplest of poems into a powerful channel of dialogue and
peace. Poetry brings together people across the continents, countries and
communities, in the spirit of harmonious living.
‘World Poetry Day 2023’ is a great
occasion for the humans in India and world over, to resolve to become poetic in
mindset as well as to read, listen to and speak poetry and to thus get more and
more cultured as human beings. May poetry make us crisscross the human-made
borders and help us keep united as human beings!
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The
author is Director, Institute of Harmony and Peace Studies, New Delhi, and
has been committed to education, cross-cultural
perspectives, cross-scriptural values, constitutional values, interfaith
relations, social ethics, communal harmony, national integration and social wellbeing,
for the past over 40 years. He
contributes to the above cause through lectures,
articles, video messages, conferences, social interactions, views at TV
channels, and the like.
He
could be viewed, listened to and
contacted at the following portals – websites ‘www.mdthomas.in’ (p),
‘https://mdthomas.academia.edu’ (p), ‘https://drmdthomas.blogspot.com’(p)
and ‘www.ihpsindia.org’ (o); social media ‘https://www.youtube.com/InstituteofHarmonyandPeaceStudies’ (o),
‘https://twitter.com/mdthomas53’ (p), ‘https://www.facebook.com/mdthomas53’ (p);
email ‘mdthomas53@gmail.com’
(p) and telephone 9810535378 (p).
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