Conclusion

Abstract

Burnett offers conclusions on how a number of recent innovative poetry communities have encouraged the cultural production of poetry and related art outcomes. Case studies are transatlantic, in the fields of: performance (spoken word, sound poetry, vispo, feminist performance); small press publishing; ecopoetics; poetry institutions. The primacy of relational exchanges in the creation of poetry “gangs” or “tribes” and community building, encourages personal connections and psychological support among participants. Long-standing Romantic notions of the poet as individualistic and isolated are superseded by innovative poetry’s—at least partial—reliance on relational returns. Such communities wager on the hope that their gifts may provide opportunities for meaningful challenge, agency and psychological growth, despite market forces that work against them.

Shouldn’t we be devoting ourselves entirely to direct social action rather than the “luxury” of poetry? I think this is an intermittent question for many of us, and it’s—I find it—a bracing one.

QS: Well, how did you answer it?

JR: (…) my answer is poethical and certainly a form of “we don’t know but we can try.”

—Retallack (2003, p. 44)