Tomorrow, March 21st, is internationally known as World Poetry Day. One of the main reasons for introducing World Poetry Day was to "support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities". Another goal for World Poetry Day is to put focus on poetry as an artform and to return to the oral tradition of poetry, while making poetry relevant in a modern society so it isn't thought of as something outdated.
Compared to other art forms, poetry is a bit special as there are no real 'bonds'. This is why some people believe that poetry has a unique ability to "capture the creative spirit of the human mind". Poetry as an art form has been known basically since forever and early examples have been found in all parts of the world. But what exactly is poetry and how did it start?
Examples of old poetry have been found all over the world, from Mesepotamia to China to Scandinavia. From medieval ballads to haiku's to Icelandic sagas, poetry has many forms.
Poetry as an artform is assumed to be older than even literacy itself! In ancient societies, poetry was used as a way to tell or record stories and cultural events. Bits of poetry have been found on rune stones, stelae and other early writing methods, indicating the importance. Early poetry was mainly epics, and the oldest surviving poem is the "Epic of Gilgames" from Mesopotamia, about the history of King Gilgamesh. It was written on clay tablets around year 3000 BC. Other examples of early epic poems are the Mahabarata and the Ramayana, which are two sanskrit epics that are important texts in Buddhism and Hinduism.
Examples of old epics from Europe include the Odyssey and the Iliad, two stories that are still very popular and well-known today, more than 3000 years later.
It wasn't only the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians who had an ancient tradition of poetry; there are also large collections of early poetry from China. The earliest collection of these is the Classic of Poetry, which is a collection of 305 poems and songs from the 10th to the 7th century BC.
The word 'poetry' itself comes from the Greek word 'poesis' meaning 'making' or 'creating'. Ancient Greek philosophers tried to classify and define poetry. An example of this is Aristotle's text Poetics that describes the three genres of poetry: the epic, the comedy and the tragedy. Later these three main categories were changed to be epic poetry, lyric poetry and dramatic poetry. Comedy and tragedy were regarded as subgenres of dramatic poetry.
Between the 11th and 13th century AC, a tradition of troubadours arose. They began as court-singers, but then later traveled to different communities to deliver poems, news, songs, and dramatic sketches, all in verse.
The poetry genre known as sonnets originated in Italy in the Middle Ages. The sonnet is believed to be created by a man named Petrarca in the 13th century. However, it is mostly known because of Shakespeare, who, besides writing plays also wrote more than 150 sonnets in the 16th century. The main difference between Shakespeare's sonnets and the original Petrarchan sonnets is the rhythm in the poems.
Just like with other literature, romanticism became popular in poems in the 18th and early half of the 19th century. The focus was on nature and relationships, and the poems were very emotional and passionate. The rhythmic meter was usually a lot freer than in earlier times.
Modern poetry has seen a lot of different variations and changes in style. From minimalism to poetry slam, there are many different types. Modern poems cover a wide array of topics, from industrialisation to the fall of society to political topics or anxiety or sexual assault.
More focus has been brought to the written version of the poem, and the way it is written down has become more important. Poems with no capital letters - or all capital letters - have become much more common, and poems doen't have to rhyme or have a certain amount of syllables anymore.
All the different types of poetry raise the question of how to actually define it as a genre. Poetry is hard to define, as it includes everything from haiku to sonnets to slam poetry and everything in between. Some even define classical music and paintings as poetry. A Polish historian of aesthetics once defined it as something that "expresses a certain state of mind", a viewpoint that has gained a lot of popularity. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, poetry is "literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm".
What then is the difference between poetry and 'normal' prose?
Early modern Western tradition has the understanding that prose is written in a linear narrative form and includes a sense of logic, whereas poetry is more abstract, free and beautiful. Prose is made up of sentences without a rhythmic structure, whereas the text structure in poetry in itself is a way to express feelings and points. Poetry can be much more expressive as you aren't restricted by having to write complete sentences.
Even though poetry as an artform is ancient, it is still very popular in today's society. Despite it often being a dreaded subject in school, poetry has the ability to express feelings that are as relevant now as they were multiple hundreds of years ago.
Poetry isn't just poems by dusty old poets that you are forced to read in school. Poems can also be poetry slam, a relatively new genre that bring focus back on the spoken tradition of poetry. Some poems you might dislike, but I'm sure there are some poems out there that will speak to you in a very special way. For ultimately, poems are about expressing feelings and inner thoughts and desires, and that will always be relevant.
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