The Power of Writing Poetry: The Lasting Relevance of Audre Lorde
‘Poetry is not a luxury.’ - Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, librarian, and civil rights activist. Self-described as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet ” Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative persona to confronting injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia during the mid-to-late 20th century.
Lorde’s parents were from the West Indies, but Lorde herself grew up in New York City. She was educated at Hunter College and Columbia University respectively, before becoming a librarian. Lorde’s first volume of poetry, First Cities, was published in 1968 and was followed by other successful poetry collections including From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) and The Black Unicorn (1978).
As the anti-war, feminist, and civil rights movements progressed, Lorde’s writings began tp meld her own political and personal feelings together. She used her platform as a writer to spread ideas about intersecting oppressions and to shine a light on the experiences faced by marginalised groups, especially women.
Lorde’s work is still as relevant, powerful and important today as when she was first published and speaking out about the injustices she observed. Below are five important lessons from Lorde about the power of writing poetry.
“Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity for our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”
Here Lorde is speaking about how poetry can be used to incite tangible action. The words we use and choose to represent us are more than just ink on paper. They inform and guide those around us to meet us in a space for conversation and action towards creating the world we want to be a part of.
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“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
Poetry is more than a creative outpouring, it’s an opportunity to purposefully and consciously tell the world who you are. Defining herself in her own terms, in her own words was a crucial element of her written work for Lorde.
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.” (The Cancer Journals)
Perhaps one of the most fulfilling lessons to be drawn from writing poetry is the connective threads it helps us to draw between each other. Poetry is a subtle reminder that no matter how many differences may exist between groups, we are all fundamentally human. There is a shared connection in how we experience what it is to be human, something that Lorde does impeccably through her prose.
“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”
Poetry is power. It is a way of giving a voice to the voiceless, of letting them know their worlds, their pain, and their experiences are not unseen. In one of Lorde’s most well-known poems Power, she writes about the fury she felt when she learned a police officer was acquitted for the shooting of a 10-year-old boy:
The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.
When asked about the writing of the poem, Lorde advised: “A kind of fury rose up in me; the sky turned red. I felt so sick. I felt as if I would drive this car into a wall, into the next person I saw.”
For me, this assertion for giving a voice to those who are repeatedly denied one is something worth holding at the forefront of our minds not only when we write, but when we choose which voices to read as well. The voices we consciously decide to tune into or away from will always have a political edge to it.
“Words had energy and power and I came to respect that power early. Pronouns, nouns, and verbs were citizens of different countries, who really got together to make a new world” (Denver Quarterly, 1981)
At the heart of many of Lorde’s writing is the notion of creating a better, more equal and inclusive world. This quote sums up beautifully the power she believed could be held in words and their ability to guide us towards a new world - one worth building and fighting for.
