Poetics and the Politics of Memory

Abstract

The chapters so far have made clear that poetry can be a form of sociopolitical critique. It pierces through worn-out metaphors and ruptures tissues of power. It names what had no name before. It slips into memory what was void of voice. It visualises light that still lingers unseen in the dark. It does so, for poetry disturbs linguistic habits through which we have come to accept whatever is, no matter how unjust and violent-prone that ‘is’ may be. This is why the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova believes that ‘there is no power more threatening and terrible/Than the prophetic word of the poet’.2