The image of the lone poet pouring out pain onto paper as the process for writing poetry has permeated our social imagination for the work of the poet. Popularized by the Romantics, the poetic ideals of loneliness and longing for connection as the font from which poetry flows assumes that poets write best in isolation. But the prevalence of poets writing in communal contexts from ancient to modern history suggests a deeper connection between community and poetry. In Borrowed Words, Elizabeth Wickland asks what happens when poets write from a place of being known, not out of longing for community, but of belonging to one? And what shifts when communities invite poets to speak into their formation?
About the Book:
The words we borrow from one another have the potential to strengthen and encourage poetic vision, leading to the mutual flourishing of community and poet alike. Weaving together stories from poetic communities centered on Christ, poems, and conversational invitations for communal formation, Borrowed Words sets the stage for lovers of poems and people to lean into the ways poets and communities can shape one another for the good of the world. The book concludes with a look at some practical steps for poets who want to find or foster their own formational communities.
Audience:
Borrowed Words is for the poets who long to find “their people,” who believe that the words they’ve been given matter for those beyond themselves. Borrowed Words is also for the communities that would gather around poems if they knew how, and would support the poets among them if they knew who. It is an invitation for readers to approach poems as humans, rather than academics. This allows them to lean into their poetic, experiential knowledge of the world as an access point to poetry, and poems as an access point to what God has made the world and them to be, offering an alternative to entering through intellectual analysis. Poetic knowledge is the means by which all humans first apprehend the world, building an intuitive framework through which they may comprehend it. Borrowed Words sets the table for readers of all types to join in the conversation, to feast together, and to taste and see the ways poetry nourishes us, body and soul.
