The purpose and power of poetry

Ruth HartleyBook Launch, Book Publishing, Poetry, Politics, Songs, The Spiral-Bound Notebooks, Zambia4 Comments

At school, we learnt to declaim poetry. It was mostly heroic stuff designed to inspire patriotism and action like Felicia Dorothea Heman’s Casabianca about filial duty and Thomas Macaulay’s incredibly lengthy poem Horatius at the Bridge about courage. We weren’t taught to make poetry, and poetry was never going to be about us and our lives. Even though this kind […]

Pascale Petit’s art and poetry: The Survival of the Artist and of our World

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Migration, Poetry, Visual Arts, Writing Process2 Comments

What connections are there between art, song, poetry, dance and all of us? Pascale Petit has generously agreed to let me put her video about her art on my post. I was moved by what she says in it and I found many thought-provoking links and connections in it to my own feelings and experiences of art, poetry and the […]