Poetry as communication
I want to talk about poetry,
about rhyme and reason
and timbre and time.
But I am lost for words when all I can see is the way it teaches us to
research the world
and guide our thinking
like an exact science
that communicates
and connects
ways of being with
ways of seeing, and all the
ways in between.
I am drawn to thinking and talking and writing about all things poetic this week because one of my favourite Australian poets, Sarah Holland-Batt, has won this year’s Stella Prize for her collection: The Jaguar.1
The Jaguar feels like a painting in words. It speaks in a gentle but electric tones to all those whose parents are unwell, or who might be wading through an undertow of grief that threatens to pull them under. I return to The Jaguar regularly, carried away by Holland-Batt’s words, which draw a line between human suffering and what it means to be human in this world. Along with her incredible poetry, Holland-Batt is one of the staunchest advocates for improved aged-care in Australia. Her work on and off the page is heartfelt.
Jeanette Winterson says “for the poet, there are words and there are words only”.
Poetry affects, but it also connects. For me, The Jaguar reflects the heart-load we carry when it comes to caring for, and worrying about, those we love and those who need to be loved.
We don’t talk about poetry a lot these days. Some actively avoid it, like a confrontation not ready to be had. But poetry surrounds us; it catches up with us, whether we like it or not. Reading poetry brings us closer to understanding life’s intensities. In poetry, the language is exact. These days, in my search for ways to best articulate, and communicate, issues of gender and the natural world, I turn to the writers who are most poetic. In doing so I wander a path that leads me to Virginia Woolf and the rhythm contained in so much of her work. In 1926 she penned a letter to Vita Sackville West, describing the importance of rhythm in writing:
“A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.”2
We must all search, and ride, that wave in the mind.
The Stella Prize is Australia’s major literary award for women and non-binary writers.
Virginia Woolf writing to Vita Sackville-West in March 1926. In Change of Perspective: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3, 1923-1928