Why the World Needs Creativity, Especially Poetry, More than Ever
The first thing you need to know about creativity is that everyone is creative.
That’s not just my opinion. It’s in our nature to create, to generate new ideas, ways of looking at a situation, solutions to problems.
But, yes, some people may appear to be more creative than others. Why?
One reason may be that they make more time to tap into their creativity and act on their creative ideas. Once you’ve reached adulthood, there is a big chance that a lot of your waking thoughts focus on very practical things like your job, paying bills, maintaining relationships, and taking care of your and your family’s well-being.
It’s no wonder that most people have given up on creative pursuits by the time they reach adulthood. American poet CAConrad often laments that the majority of people he knew who also wrote poetry when they were young have all stopped now. Why is that? Or maybe the more important question to ask is what impact that has on you and the world around you.
According to CAConrad, “No matter who you are, having a daily creative practice can expand your ability to better form the important questions we need to be asking ourselves about how to best change the destructive direction we are all headed.”
Poetry is a form that is particularly able to affect readers and listeners on both an intellectual and emotional level. Scientific journals, documentaries, and news articles will always have their place. But poetry is able to persuade readers who reject these media because they feel they have heard it all before. In fact, they may have heard it before. Environmental scientists and activists have been working to get our attention since at least the 1960s.
Poetry, particularly ecopoetry, “can act as ‘an ice axe to break the frozen sea inside us,’ awakening our dulled perceptions and feelings. This is the power of all poetry.” (Fisher-Wirth and Street). Do we need any other rhetoric beside that of science? Gary Snyder, an earlier American poet, responds that “art helps to make some people appreciate the world…If we can appreciate what is given, then the next step is to trust the rational guys to tell us what’s the best move” (Bilbro, 439). When asked what poetry, if anything, can do for the environment, Snyder replies: “we need those who love the world. Poetry is to help people love the world” (439).
“No matter who you are, having a daily creative practice can expand your ability to better form the important questions we need to be asking ourselves about how to best change the destructive direction we are all headed.”
Although it would be naïve to think that poetry alone will save the planet, it is equally unrealistic to place all of our hopes in politicians, scientists, and producers of hard-hitting news stories and documentaries. As the man responsible for coining the term Anthropocene has said, “To develop a world-wide accepted strategy leading to sustainability of ecosystems against human-induced stresses will be one of the great future tasks of mankind” (Crutzen). This task will require the ingenuity and creativity of those working in both the sciences and the arts.
If we agree with the editors of The Ecopoetry Anthology that the current “environmental crisis is made possible by a profound failure of the imagination” then what we need is the poet’s unique ability to activate the imagination both cognitively and emotionally. We need to not only imagine possibilities of mutual understanding between human and nonhuman, but also the absolute need to imagine a different way of living. Some people are imagining another way – poets are among them.
To read the entirety of CAConrad’s (Soma)tic MANIFESTATION
Bilbro, Jeffrey. "Helping People Love the World: An Interview with Gary Snyder." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (2011): 431-441.
Crutzen, Paul and Eugene F Stoermer. "Have we entered the "Anthropocene"?" 31 October 2010. Global International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Change. 15 June 2019. <http://www.igbp.net/news/opinion/opinion/haveweenteredtheanthropocene.5.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a8000578.html>.
Fisher-Wirth, Ann and Laura-Gray Street. The Ecopoetry Anthology. Ed. Ann Fisher-Wurth and Laura-Gray Street. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2013.