ELOQUENT BODY: A Tough Language

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

A Tough Language

‘When people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it should not be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that it what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say it how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place, it is a finding place.’

Jeanette Winterson, from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

1 comment:

Anonymous19 March 2013 at 21:49
you have no idea how serendipitious it was to get an email from you, which led me to read your blog this evening after a poetry session with learners in Nyanga... I had been thinking in my head how I would describe what a lifeline poetry is...

anyway, this quote inspired my blogpost today:

sonnet 116: challenging life http://wp.me/p33mLl-bR

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