By Chloe Sipeki
Poetry is trapped in a ghetto.
It is unregarded by mainstream media, meaning that for a journalism student like me poetry was uncharted territory.
With the opportunity to attend the Sydney Writers’ Festival this year, I thought it was due time to give poetry a chance.
Speak the Light was one of the sessions curated by artist Jazz Money that showcased the works of seven prominent names in the poetry world.
Each poet presented to the audience pieces from their collections that they felt revealed something, shedding light on the world or themselves.
As the poets read their words a sombre mood settled throughout the room.
Hands were brought to mouths and tears were brought to eyes.
The crowd became unable to brush aside the passion behind what was being said.
When we watch or read the news, it is easy to become detached from devastating stories that are presented to us in an unemotional and unrelatable way. We are given the big picture, and rarely recognize the significance of the event to the individual.
For many, the news goes in one ear and out the other and they continue their daily doom scroll without actually taking any of it in.
Poetry, I now realise, is the opposite of this.
It is created to make you think and make you feel.
A piece that received a significant response from the crowd, and which has featured in international news articles, is “Bluey in the Genocide” by Omar Sakr.
Omar took the most popular episode of beloved family television show, Bluey, and shifted the perspective. What was an episode that centred around a boy missing his veteran father, has become an inappropriately normalised image of conflict.
If it is normalised, how is it supposed to end?
Omar’s sentiments were echoed by several other poets including Sara M Salem, who began her reading by saying: “I don’t know how to share poetry by or about Palestinian women. They don’t get festivals or panels or pulpits. They don’t get poetry.”
Each member of the audience was witness to how, in speaking their “light”, the poets had chosen to discuss the ways important matters, such as the genocide in Gaza and injustice towards First Nation’s people, can be viewed in a different light. A light that reveals how real and confronting these matters are to a room of people who, in many ways, have been kept in the dark.
“Artists can’t stop the genocide, but we can make people aware of it,” said poet Jeanine Leane.
Leane closed the session on a poignant note, reminding the audience about the power of the arts and the power of the people who listen.
“You are the public; you are the people. Please use your voice.”
The art of poetry has become a way to communicate adversity and build communities of people who share opinions, feelings, and experiences. It is an emotional, political, spiritual, and undoubtedly impressionable representation of just how powerful words can be.
Featured image: The power of words was celebrated at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. Photo: Chloe Sipeki