The Realpoetik Manifesto

Jessica L. Wilkinson & Ali Alizadeh, Cordite Poetry Review, November 2012

FOR TOO LONG has poetry been disregarded as a valid vehicle for the exploration of real world experience. Too often has poetry been filed in the 'too hard' basket and deemed 'irrelevant' and 'inaccessible'. This declaration calls for an end to the mistreatment and marginalisation of poetic language; an end to the segregation of poetry from and by the authoritative discourse of prose. We summon forth the potential of poetry to expand our conceptions and perceptions of the 'real'.

(Further reading: Ali Alizadeh interviewing Jessica L. Wilkinson on her poetic biographies of Marion Davies, Percy Grainger and George Balanchine: The objective, for me, is to make the biography come alive as an echo of character, rather than to dish up all the 'facts' for a greedy reader. There are other ways to know a character beyond the facts.)