Week Four Outing: Poetry Library

Our outing this week was to the Poetry Library at Southampton Centre.

While at the library, I browsed through a variety of poetry magazines and books with the purpose of thinking of the role of poetry in the public sphere.

Overall, I feel that poetry plays a relatively minimal role in the public sphere. Because poetry generally is more abstract and not concrete and straightforward in the message it presents, I don't feel that poetry is a powerful force in stimulating public debate and discussion. I do feel that poetry is something more removed from every day life, which does make it more intimidating to most people.

The Poetry Library itself was set up like other libraries would, but I still was more hesitant to open up magazines and books than I would be in a regular library. When I did open up a magazine, I felt more that I was opening up a personal diary of a stranger than a piece of material that was available to me to read and absorb. The words written on those pages seemed more to be the private, inner thoughts of the authors than they seemed to be public written works.

Some poetry did discuss topics that are relevant to the public sphere as a whole, such as "F*** It All" found in Essence- Issue 5 Culture (part 1) that focused on a lesbian couple's interactions in a public tube station, and "Fat Girls" by Lyn Lifshin which discussed society's views of female beauty. Again, though, these poems seemed to be more of personal interpretation of the issues than stimulation of public debate and discussion.

Some poetry magazines seemed very applicable to the concept of a public sphere, such as Coverland which was about "progressive culture since 1954" and focused on global issues about Australia and Brazil, such as race and financial issues),  The Coffee House with its title hearkening back to the coffeehouse days of London that thrived on public discussion, exiled ink that was written "because of media representation of certain countries and of Muslims' beliefs and civilisation" and included work by writers from demonised countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

While poetry does, at times, include messages relevant to public debate and discussion, because of the more personal and abstract style of writing that poetry embodies, it is much more removed from the public sphere and more found in private places of personal reflection.