What is Poetry Good for?
Here’s what Dylan Thomas had to say about poetry:
“Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toenails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone and not alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. All that matters about poetry is the enjoyment of it however tragic it may be all that matters is the eternal movement behind it – the great undercurrent of human grief, folly, pretension, exaltation and ignorance – however un-lofty the intention of the poem”… From A Few Words of a Kind
What Poetry Brings to Business
by Clare Morgan, Ted Buswick, and Kirsten Lange
What does poetry bring to business? According to Clare Morgan and her coauthors, it brings complexity and flexibility of thinking, along with the ability to empathize with and better understand the thoughts and feelings of others. Through her own experiences and many examples, Morgan demonstrates that the skills necessary to talk and think about poetry can be of significant benefit to leaders and to executives who are facing infinite complexity and who are armed with finite resources in a changing world.
What Poetry Brings to Business presents ways in which reading and thinking about poetry offer businesspeople new strategies for reflection on their companies, their daily tasks, and their work environments. The goal is both to increase and broaden readers’ understanding of poems and how they convey meaning, and also to help readers develop analytical and cognitive skills that will be beneficial in a business context.
This is an excellent book on decoding poetry for leaders and managers interested in using the arts as a catalyst for reflecting on business issues.
Buy What Poetry Brings to Business on Amazon
Gather your team for a haiku walkabout
I participated in a haiku workshop recently with poet Michael Dylan Welch, who led us on a haiku walkabout to capture seed ideas for haiku poetry. Click here for instructions on how to create a haiku poem.
30 Ways to Celebrate Poetry from Poets.org
Poets.org has some wonderful suggestions:
- Take a poem out to lunch Adding a poem to lunch puts some poetry in your day and gives you something great to read while you eat.”
- Attend a poetry reading. Readings have been occurring for decades around the world in universities, bookstores, cafes, corner pubs, and coffeehouses.
- Play Exquisite Corpse Each participant is unaware of what the others have written, thus producing a surprising—sometimes absurd—yet often beautiful poem.
- Integrate poetry with technology Many email programs allow you to create personalized signatures that are automatically added to the end of every email you send.
- Watch a poetry movie What better time than National Poetry Month to gather some friends, watch a poetry-related movie, and perhaps discuss some of the poet’s work after the film?
Check out the entire list at Poets.org
Why not host your own poetry reading? Invite friends over to share their poems and take time to reflect on each poem. It’s amazing how quickly we connect more deeply when we discuss the meaning of a poem.
Try this: Start or end your meeting with a poem and notice how it changes the mood.
