Editor Chinki Sinha says that “Poetry expands the scope of storytelling.
It shows us that there is a moral power in the individual voice that must be protected.
Poetry is evidence—of other lives, of our times."
As a news magazine, we are expected to be reasonable—to present the facts, to report what happened, and we are all these things and more. We don’t exclude any truth in any medium.
A hundred pages of poetry— as testimony. Our January 2024 issue 'Poetry As Evidence' was a leap of faith for a newsroom.
Why read poetry? Why stand still and tune into poetry’s cadences in a madly spinning world? Because poetry, as the wise Irish poet Seamus Heaney put it, “inspires a hope that new possibility can still open up.”
Despite the wars and the bloodshed, despite the rise of despots and widening divides, despite fear and heartbreak, poetry showcases the human capacity to speak up, to register injustices, to break free of the shackles of “word limits and sound-bites’’; to celebrate love and empathy, to dream of peace.
#PoetryAsResistance #Poems #Literature #StorytellingThroughPoetry #Journalism #Newsroom #PoetryAndJournalism
It shows us that there is a moral power in the individual voice that must be protected.
Poetry is evidence—of other lives, of our times."
As a news magazine, we are expected to be reasonable—to present the facts, to report what happened, and we are all these things and more. We don’t exclude any truth in any medium.
A hundred pages of poetry— as testimony. Our January 2024 issue 'Poetry As Evidence' was a leap of faith for a newsroom.
Why read poetry? Why stand still and tune into poetry’s cadences in a madly spinning world? Because poetry, as the wise Irish poet Seamus Heaney put it, “inspires a hope that new possibility can still open up.”
Despite the wars and the bloodshed, despite the rise of despots and widening divides, despite fear and heartbreak, poetry showcases the human capacity to speak up, to register injustices, to break free of the shackles of “word limits and sound-bites’’; to celebrate love and empathy, to dream of peace.
#PoetryAsResistance #Poems #Literature #StorytellingThroughPoetry #Journalism #Newsroom #PoetryAndJournalism
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NewsTranscript
00:00In January 2024, Outlook decided to look at poetry.
00:04As a news magazine, we are expected to be reasonable,
00:07to present the facts, to report what happened.
00:11And we do all these things and more.
00:13We do not exclude any truth in any medium.
00:16Editor Chinki Sinha says that poetry expands the scope of storytelling.
00:21It shows us that there is a moral power in the individual voice that must be protected.
00:26Poetry is evidence of other lives.
00:30Of our times.
00:31A hundred pages of poetry.
00:33A testimony.
00:34This issue was a leap of faith for a newsroom.
00:37That's why Outlook invited Amar Kanwar, filmmaker, artist, storyteller,
00:42to guest edit a special issue titled, Poetry as Evidence.
00:47Kanwar offered three propositions.
00:49Questions really, about the role of poetry in a fractured world.
00:53Kanwar's first proposition.
00:55Imagine the simultaneous viewing of multiple time.
00:59Of obvious time, hyper time, orphan time.
01:04Time that unexpectedly shoots off from beneath your feet and races away.
01:09Time measured in missile strikes.
01:11In the sudden silence after a bomb.
01:13In the distance between a knock on the door and the opening of it.
01:17Robin S. Gangom knows this time when he writes,
01:22My home is a gun pressed against both temples.
01:26A knock on a night that has not ended.
01:29A torch lit long after the theft.
01:32A sonnet about body counts.
01:34Undoubtedly raped.
01:36Definitely abandoned.
01:37In a tryst with destiny.
01:38Time folds in on itself.
01:41History repeats.
01:43The present is haunted by the past.
01:45Bashir Ahmed Dada, writing from Kashmir, counts time in absence.
01:50A memory slipping away.
01:51A face disappearing from a street corner.
01:54How do you hold on to a life that's already vanished?
01:57How do you resist time's quiet erasure?
02:00This was the second proposition by Kanwar.
02:02Imagine the morning newspaper.
02:04Headlines and couplets.
02:06Black and white.
02:07Button verse.
02:08Imagine that constellation of words.
02:11If the news reported not just facts, but feelings.
02:14If the headlines told you how it felt to lose a home.
02:18To lose a country.
02:19To lose your name.
02:20Aamir Aziz's poem cuts through the fog of forgetting.
02:24Sab yaad rakha jayega.
02:25Everything will be remembered.
02:27Memory is resistance.
02:29To forget is to surrender.
02:31Katyal names the quiet violence of exclusion.
02:34The weight of standing in the crowd unseen.
02:37What if the newspaper told you about those silences?
02:41The unspoken rule of belonging and unbelonging.
02:45Shakespeare does not wait for permission to speak.
02:47His rap burns through the margins of the city.
02:50Poetry becomes a counter-narrative.
02:52A way of saying,
02:53I see you.
02:54I remember you.
02:56This was the third proposition by Kanwar.
02:58Can poetry help us understand the passage of time?
03:02And if that were possible,
03:03could we glimpse the future?
03:05Prakash Jadav's words echo across a fractured city.
03:09Hey ma,
03:10tell me my religion.
03:11Who am I?
03:12What am I?
03:13You're not a Hindu or a Muslim.
03:16You are an abandoned spark of the world's lusty fires.
03:19Identity breaks apart under pressure.
03:22What survives?
03:23What remains?
03:24Begum Asma Khatun's poem answers,
03:27Phul Banu's mother's eyes are full.
03:29Child, independence is not ours.
03:32Independence is of the rich man.
03:34Independence is of the MLA and the minister.
03:36A broken promise.
03:38A future stolen before it arrived.
03:40But T. Keritsu says,
03:43But still swell against the tender licks of spring and bloom.
03:47Even after destruction, poetry blooms.
03:49Even after forgetting, poetry remembers.
03:52Even after silence, poetry speaks.
03:55Converse propositions were questions.
03:57And poetry responds.
03:59Not with answers, but evidence.
04:02Poetry names the invisible.
04:04It archives what history could erase.
04:06It survives where language ends.
04:08Chinkisina says that a poem is also an act of remembrance.
04:12That's why Outlook turned to poetry.
04:14Not just to understand the world, but to hold it accountable.
04:17In our war and peace issue, we turn to poetry to make sense of conflict.
04:22For poets from conflict zones like Ukraine, Palestine,
04:25Poetry becomes a tool for resistance, for memory.
04:29And in our Jal Jangal Jameen issue,
04:32The magazine's opening piece was from Adivasi poet Jacinta Kerkatta.
04:36If a poem holds the truth, could it also hold justice?
04:40Could it also build a future from what's been lost?
04:42Or maybe, maybe, poetry is evidence.