{"id":77695,"date":"2025-07-28T00:03:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T04:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=77695"},"modified":"2025-07-28T00:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T04:03:23","slug":"how-poetry-can-help-to-fight-polarisation-and-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-poetry-can-help-to-fight-polarisation-and-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"How poetry can help to fight polarisation and misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

People are becoming more divided and ill informed. In January 2024, a report by the\u00a0World Economic Forum<\/a>\u00a0identified misinformation and disinformation as \u201cthe most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years\u201d.<\/p>\n

As a result, it predicted \u201cperceptions of reality are likely to also become polarised\u201d \u2013 and that unrest resulting from unreliable information may cause \u201cviolent protests \u2026 hate crimes \u2026 civil confrontation and terrorism\u201d. Many people would agree that something is needed to bridge the ever-widening gaps between ourselves.<\/p>\n

In my view, this is not just a problem of alternative sets of facts, but a failure to perceive and empathise with that which is outside of our own experiences.<\/p>\n

While the smartphone, with its capacity to provide users with sources from across the world, can provide endless opportunity to learn about other perspectives and experiences,\u00a0research suggests<\/a>\u00a0social media increasingly cocoons users within their own interests.<\/p>\n

This algorithmically encouraged self-importance means we are\u00a0stuck in a feedback loop<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the echo chamber \u2013 where our own experiences, values and desires are seen as the norm.<\/p>\n

In contrast, by encouraging people to imagine beyond their own experience, reading poetry can serve as an exercise in seeing things from a different perspective.<\/p>\n

Poetry has always been political. The writer and civil-rights activist\u00a0Audre Lorde<\/a>\u00a0argued it produces \u201ca revelatory distillation of experience\u201d. In other words, by distilling aspects of an experience, poetry can reveal powerful truths about reality.<\/p>\n

Lorde\u2019s poem\u00a0Afterimages<\/a>\u00a0(1981) records her memory of turning 21 in the same year that\u00a014-year-old Emmett Till was lynched<\/a>\u00a0in Mississippi. The poem\u2019s revelation is a simple one. For black Americans, coming of age means coming to terms with the constant threat of extreme racial violence.<\/p>\n

Poetry\u2019s success often relies upon showing people aspects of the world which they might otherwise have ignored, repressed or simply missed.<\/p>\n

Some poetry experiments with form itself to produce this revelatory effect.\u00a0Estate Fragments<\/a>\u00a0(2014) is a long poem written by Gavin Goodwin, exploring the Bettws council estate in Newport. It juxtaposes quotations from academic writing alongside interviews with residents \u2013 a practice referred to as \u201cfound poetry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Goodwin attempts to consider the effect that seemingly abstract political decision-making and discussions have on a particular place and community. Take this stanza:<\/p>\n

Increased inequality<\/p>\n

ups the stakes<\/p>\n

\u2018People that were younger than you<\/p>\n

were more dangerous.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first two lines quote\u00a0Common Culture<\/a>\u00a0by Paul Willis (1990), a sociological study in the cultures of young people. The latter are from an interview with a resident of the Bettws estate. Together, they tell a story: national economic inequality causes people in a working-class community to fear each other.<\/p>\n

Looking closer and looking deeper<\/strong><\/h4>\n

More conventional lyric poetry can still reveal sociopolitical realities. Canadian M\u00e9tis Nation writer katherena vermette\u2019s collection\u00a0North End Love Songs<\/a>\u00a0(2012) explores the North End in Winnipeg, Canada. In a\u00a0CBC interview<\/a>, vermette discussed how the local community are:<\/p>\n

The people that get picked on [and] blamed \u2026 but what I\u2019m trying to do in my work is to go into looking closer and looking deeper \u2026 and seeing that they\u2019re not what they seem.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Misinformation and polarisation cause social tension, as particular groups are generalised and blamed. Vermette\u2019s poem\u00a0indians<\/a>\u00a0explicitly explores the devastation caused by preconceptions of peoples and places.<\/p>\n

The poem recalls vermette\u2019s brother going missing, before being found in the Red River, a powerful body of water that moves through Winnipeg. It focuses on the apathy of Winnipeg\u2019s police service, who tell the family that there is \u201cno sense looking\u201d, as the man will return when \u201che gets bored\/or broke\u201d. The authorities come to this conclusion not through investigation, but by reducing the speaker\u2019s brother to racist stereotypes.<\/p>\n

This is then contrasted with what the family \u201cfinds out\u201d. Not only has the brother drowned, but the \u201cland floods\/with dead indians\u201d. The speaker discovers the fate of her brother is also the fate of many other M\u00e9tis people in Winnipeg. This personal experience of loss comes to speak for many other loses:<\/p>\n

indians get drunk<\/p>\n

don\u2019t we know it?<\/p>\n

do stupid things<\/p>\n

like being young<\/p>\n

like going home alone<\/p>\n

like walking across a frozen river<\/p>\n

not quite frozen<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vermette links grief to struggles against systematic apathy and oppression. The poem\u2019s sense of politics, people and place are a central part of its poetics.<\/p>\n

Such explicitness means the poem meaningfully connects to important political issues \u2013 drawing attention to the startlingly high number of missing people found and suspected to be in the Red River. As such, it can also link to important grassroots initiatives like\u00a0Drag the Red<\/a>, which aims to \u201cfind answers about missing loved ones\u201d which might lie in the river.<\/p>\n

While North End Love Songs was published two years before Drag the Red\u2019s formation, the poem and initiative are clearly formed by the same kind of traumatic, sociopolitical events.<\/p>\n

Newsfeeds increasingly silo us into comfortable ways of thinking and perceiving. Forty years on, Lorde\u2019s declaration that poetry \u201cis not a luxury\u201d takes on a whole new meaning. Now, it might be a political necessity.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Alex Hubbard is Associate lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People are becoming more divided and ill informed. In January 2024, a report by the\u00a0World Economic Forum\u00a0identified misinformation and disinformation as \u201cthe most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years\u201d. As a result, it predicted \u201cperceptions of reality are likely to also become polarised\u201d \u2013 and that unrest resulting from unreliable information may […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[435136],"tags":[295373],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-77695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","tag-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow poetry can help to fight polarisation and misinformation - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-poetry-can-help-to-fight-polarisation-and-misinformation\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How poetry can help to fight polarisation and misinformation - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"People are becoming more divided and ill informed. In January 2024, a report by the\u00a0World Economic Forum\u00a0identified misinformation and disinformation as \u201cthe most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years\u201d. 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