Poems, historians say, tell people a lot more about past events in history than word-of-mouth or written dialogue ever will. This is because, as spoken by author Bijal A Shah, “writing poetry requires the poet to be extremely disciplined with his choice of words and the number of words, to create a sharp and accurate snapshot of what he or she is feeling”. Through the power of poetry, people can “feel” the authors emotion and understand exactly what they were going through at the time of writing.
Take WW1 for example. During the time, many young men from around the globe enlisted for their countries army, believing it would be an “adventure” and a “chance to explore the world”. It was only when poems and other forms of literature written by soldiers were sent back to their homeland that people realised the horror and trauma that the soldiers endured. Without these pieces of information, many people today would still struggle to understand the enormity of the war.
Reading poetry can also show another side of a story. For example, “The Stolen Generation” by David Keig highlights the suffering and pain the native Australian Indigenous populous experienced between 1910-1970. These poems written by Indigenous peoples, as well as other forms of writing, would almost certainly have contributed to the relinquishment of the system in 1970, and the later apology from Kevin Rudd in 2008. Poetry by the Indigenous Australians have given white Australians an insight into their turmoiled past.
So why do we humans turn to poetry when we experience a large event in our lives? Perhaps, as Bijal A Shah suggests, poetry is a form of therapy. Bijal even goes as far to say that “poetry helped me enormously during difficult transitions in my life.” Whatever the case, poetry seems to hold a highly descriptive and sometimes emotional power that few other forms of literature possess. Poetry is the key to unlocking humanity’s hidden, and mysterious, past.
Credit for quotes and statistics goes to Bijal A Shah from https://medium.com/@bijalashah/why-poetry-is-one-of-the-most-powerful-forms-of-therapy-f3553cb909b4
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