POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY

"For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought."

Though brief, it takes a long time to read Audre Lorde's essay 'Poetry is Not a Luxury'. Each sentence so tightly packed that you find yourself pausing often, letting each truth unfurl. It feels almost impossible to write about without quoting whole reams since Lorde's words articulate so accurately, and so joyfully, what she is communicating.

Lorde argues that poetry is essential. That it is revolutionary in its ability to move us. That the naming of our deepest feelings; our innate, non-rational knowledge; our emotions (so often discounted in our society), through poetry, is the only way to bring about profound and lasting change. That poetry is the way we recognise and implement our freedom. For Lorde, none of this is in the abstract. She writes from a place of practicality, real life ever present. Real life, in fact, is what makes all this so vital.

RBG

Early January this year and feeling a little post-holiday blue, a walk in St James' Park and an impromptu visit to the ICA found me snuggled in at their tiny screen two to watch RBG, a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. An unlikely choice of subject matter for a comforting pick-me-up but I'd seen the memes and the American babies dressed in white collars and huge, dark framed glasses for Halloween, and if nothing else it seemed like an interesting enough way to pass the afternoon.

Described off the bat as the 'closest thing to a superhero' by (none other than) Gloria Steinem, furthered by shots of the diminutive, eighty-something Ginsburg lifting weights at the gym wearing a sweatshirt that reads 'Super Diva!', alongside clips from SNL and the like, her status as a liberal icon is quickly established. But 'they don't know the half of it', one commentator notes, and charting the course of her life from Harvard Law School to Supreme Court, it becomes clear that far from the larger than life character that her moniker 'the notorious RBG' suggests, quiet-natured and reserved, it is Ginsburg's intellect, pragmatism and tireless work ethic that are her real superpowers. Examining her contribution and commitment to gender equality and civil rights, the documentary emphasises Ginsburg's belief that real and enduring change happens one step at a time. Every case, every dissenting opinion, carefully considered and built upon to further the cause. As Aminatou Sow (of Call Your Girlfriend) says: 'realising that somebody like RBG has been doing her job for decades, and being forceful and speaking truth to power, kind of blows my mind'. I leave the cinema blues dispelled, loins girded, mind equally blown.